Good Morning Midnight
by ignitesthestars
Summary: In the conservatory at Tomikyana, Alina tells Mal what their story would have been if the Grisha Examiners had discovered her power. This is that tale, from the very beginning, to the bitter end. (AlinaxMal, AlinaxDarkling)
1. Chapter 1

**before.**

The girl fought.

She had stilled for a moment. The space in between two breaths. In the grand scheme of things, it was an infinitesimal length of time. It should have been meaningless.

But it was enough.

"There is something…" The woman in red frowned, hand clamping down tighter around the girl's wrist. The girl could feel her, or some part of her. Reaching inside, reassuring. Certain. _This is who you are_, it whispered, as it teased out some thread of her very being.

"Mal!" The girl bucked her entire body, putting all the force of her young life into her voice and into her will. She grabbed a hold of that thread, and tried her desperate best to sever it. "_Mal!_"

"Alina!"

At the sound of his voice, the girl relaxed. And the world shattered, in a burst of brilliant, white light.

They put her back with the boy, afterwards. Even Grisha Examiners tired of screaming eventually. The second she was able, she fell into him, feeling his pudgy hands gripping her tight as she burbled apologies.

"It's okay." The tremor in his voice was like an earthquake, shaking the girl apart. It was not okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. "It's not your fault, Alina. You – you didn't mean to, right?"

The girl shook her head frantically. "No!" Her own spindly fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt. "They're going to take me away, Mal."

The boy could have promised they would not. Could have sworn he would make them take him as well. But eight years old was old enough for orphans to know what illusions the world would let them keep. There was no making _Grisha_ do anything.

"I'll find you," he whispered instead, and made his voice fierce to cover the fear. "Alina? I'll find you."

The girl nodded, and clung to the boy until the Grisha made her unclench her fingers, one by one.

**i.**

It didn't take Alina long to figure out that she'd done something _really strange_. Ana Kuya had called her a lot of things, but she'd never been accused of stupidity. Once the tears had dried and she had settled into a stunned, scared silence, she was able to listen in on what the Grisha were saying over her head.

She had been bundled into the woman's red _kefta_ and sandwiched into the troika in between the two men. The woman sat opposite them, expression tight as the sleigh lurched into motion. Not unkindly, the younger man had explained to Alina that if she kept making so much noise about leaving, they would be forced to punish Mal for it. Mal, it seemed, had been given the same warning; they had held each other's gazes, white-faced and quiet, until the coach tore them apart forever.

_Not forever_, Alina reminded herself, squeezing her eyes shut against fresh tears. Mal had promised. He would find her.

"...still think we ought to have sent word," the man in blue was saying. Alina hadn't bothered to remember any of their names. "We aren't prepared to deal with the possible repercussions of this."

"We are not," the woman said sharply. "Which is why we have left. Waiting for orders means not only time to send word, but time for word to be sent back, and then we would have to make this trip regardless. Haste is our ally now, not caution."

"We might try for both," the man in purple said dryly, earning himself a poisonous look from the woman.

It wasn't a word Alina was familiar with, but it didn't sound like anything good. Swaddled in the _kefta_, she shifted uncomfortably.

Had she done something wrong? They were taking to her to Os Alta. Was she to face the King's justice? Honestly, she wasn't even sure what she had done. The woman had reached inside her, and there had been light where there was none before.

Darkness, everyone knew about. Tales of the Darklings had been passed down through generations - even Ana Kuya had made hushed mention of them on more than one occasion. They had torn Ravka apart. They kept Ravka safe. But there were no stories about light.

It occurred to Alina that she might not be facing the King's justice at all.

**ii.**

Days blurred together. Alina wasn't sure how long it took to get to the capital, only that it didn't take long enough. Despite the man in purple - his name was Grigori, she learnt grudgingly - keeping up a litany of tales about the comforts of the Little Palace, she was still terrified of what awaited her at their destination. Any length of time would not have been long enough.

Beyond that, the faster they travelled, the harder it was going to be for Mal to catch up. She didn't exactly have the details nailed down about how an eight year old boy was going to travel through a Ravkan winter to get to Os Alta, but he had promised. He'd find her.

As she eavesdropped on the Grisha's conversations, she gleaned that they worried about being attacked. But even though there was unmistakable worry in their voices, she couldn't help but notice a hint of something else. Something so alien to an orphan girl from the borderlands, it wasn't until she played their words over and over in her little mind that she realised what it was.

That was more terrifying than anything else her imagination could summon. At least,that was what Alina thought right up until the moment she overheard the word _Darkling._

Her entire body seized, enough so that Grigori noticed. There was a pause, before the collar of the _kefta_ covering her face was tugged away, and warm brown eyes blinked down at her.

"You are supposed to be asleep, Miss Alina," he chided.

She ignored that.

"Is that who you're taking me to?" she demanded, sounding braver than she felt. "Is the - is the Darkling going to punish me?"

"Punish you?" Blonde eyebrows winged their way upwards. "Is that why you've been such a quiet little mouse?"

_No_, she wanted to say. She had been quiet because, even though Mal was long in the distance now, he wouldn't always be. When they were together again, she didn't want anyone punishing him for any outbursts on her part.

So she stayed silent, prompting a sigh from the man. "You are not going to be punished. Do you think I am a liar? I have been telling you for days now, the things you will have in the Little Palace. You will want for nothing, I promise you."

"Especially you," the man in blue muttered, whereupon he was immediately shushed by the woman.

_Especially you_. The rest of the talk fell away as Alina considered that. _Different again_, a voice in her head said.

It wasn't until they actually arrived in Os Alta that she realised how neatly she had been distracted from asking about the Darkling.

**iii.**

_I can walk!_ Alina wanted to bite it out with all the ferocity her tiny body could manage, but she didn't. She wanted to do a lot of things she couldn't. She wanted to not be _here_.

_Here_ was the Little Palace, or at least that was what Grigori had told her. They had told her to keep her face hidden for now, so she had only seen it in flashes as he carried her - golden domes, animals in the wood, people in charcoal clothes scurrying around. _Like rats_, she thought, and instantly felt bad for it. It wasn't the servants' fault she was here, after all.

At least, she didn't think so.

"Klara has gone on ahead," Grigori was explaining. "So we will be seen immediately! And afterwards, I will see if I can find you some of those cakes I was telling you about."

The most distressing part of that sentence was that, after days on the road, the cakes did sound tempting. Alina knew bribery when she heard it.

"...Fine," she mumbled. Maybe she would be able to save one, for when she saw Mal again.

"Ahah, so she does speak! Here I was beginning to think I had imagined those lungs."

Alina made a pained sound, feeling her face burn in humiliation. But Grigori's chuckle rumbled through her, and she realised after a moment that she was...relaxing. The smallest amount, but enough that the man had to shift his grip on her.

"It will all be fine, Alina. You will see."

_It will all be fine_. There were five words that Alina did not trust in the , she didn't doubt that her new guardian believed it, and that was a little comforting. She tucked her face into his chest and tried not to fall asleep to the easy rhythm of his steps. It had been a long trip, after all.

**iv.**

It seemed lately that whenever Alina tried to do things, she failed at them. Blinking blearily, she rubbed at her eyes with a _kefta_ clad hand as Grigori nudged her awake, setting her gently on the ground. Even so, she stumbled a little under the weight of the material - the garment was made for an adult, after all, and Alina had never been a robust child.

"You brought her straight to me, then."

She stiffened, hand freezing in front of her face. The voice was a new one, cool and distant. Like an ice melt, she decided, and nodded to herself before she realised what she was doing.

"_Da, moi soverenyi_." That was the woman, the one whose _kefta_ she was wearing. Grigori had called her Klara, not that Alina cared. This was all her fault, after all. "I apologise for the state of her, but-"

"You have done well."

A chair creaked, and from behind her hand, Alina saw something dark move towards her. She backed away, into Grigori's legs, but he pushed her back. She stumbled again, but this time the dark shape caught her, careful hands steadying. Instantly, she felt calm for the first time since Klara had put her hands on her.

Not just dark, she realised, lifting her head. _Black_.

The first thing she noticed were his eyes. Grey, like the sky before it rained. She tensed, expecting a thunderstorm, but the man - the black shape was a man - merely let her go, and straightened.

"I will see to the situation from here." That ice melt voice tumbled over her head. "Your service will be rewarded, if what Klara reported is true."

Klara and the man in blue - she still didn't know his name - turned to leave, but Grigori hesitated. At least, he did when Alina whipped around, _kefta_ trailing belatedly behind her.

"Grigori!" she cried. Somewhere behind him, Klara winced.

Grigori glanced up at the man in black, before crouching in front of her. His face broke into an easy smile. "I will see you soon, little mouse. Remember what I said before?" He tapped her under the chin with his finger. "No crying, now."

He stood and followed his fellow Grisha out of the room, leaving Alina to wonder if he had wanted her to remember the cakes, or his threat about Mal.

**v.**

The door shut with a click that wasn't anywhere near dramatic enough for how alone Alina abruptly felt. A beat or two passed, before a rustling sound alerted her to the fact that the man was crouching down again, swooping in from his impressive height to look her in the eyes.

She caught only the briefest flash of gray before instinct made her turn her face away again. She didn't hide it this time, though. Just looked somewhere over his shoulder, towards two heavy doors leading out of the room she was in. It surprised her to realise that she wasn't scared of this man, even with his cool voice and his pale skin, such a sharp contrast to the colour of his clothes.

She was angry.

"Do you know who I am?"

Alina did. Or at least, she thought she did. A tremble ran through her small form. Maybe she was a little bit scared.

"The Darkling," she said finally, still not meeting his gaze. And then, before she could stop herself- "It's your fault they took me."

There was a pause, before the hint of a sigh brushed against her cheek. It felt...sad. Or if not sad, at least regretful. Startled, she jerked her head up.

The clouds in those eyes had cleared away, and if he wasn't looking at her warmly, at least that distance had gone. He didn't seem as old as she thought his height implied - more like Grigori's age, really, even if that didn't make any sense at all.

"You are right," he said softly. "On both counts. I'm sorry for that, but if you are what Klara thinks you are, you had to be kept safe. And so did Keramzin."

"Keramzin?" A shock of fear sent her rigid. _Mal_. And Ana Kuya, and everyone else there. Even the big kids, who would tease them for entertainment. "What did I do? What's going to happen to Keramzin?"

Vague memories roared to the forefront of her mind. She had done her best to suppress everything about her life before the orphanage, like she was supposed to, but sometimes - sometimes she couldn't help herself. She wasn't an orphan for no reason.

"Most likely nothing will happen to it." He reached out to take her arm, searching for her hand in the folds of the _kefta_ with a light touch. His fingers were long and white as they curled around her wrist, and she couldn't help but think that the same words could be applied to hers, much smaller though they were.

Alina waited for him to address her first question, but it didn't seem like he wanted to. As his hand closed over her skin, though, she found she didn't mind so much. Surety washed over her; her travel-tired legs held her up better, and as she looked into that grey gaze, she felt her heart rate slow down. In the back of her mind, her memories folded themselves quietly away.

It wasn't like Klara's touch. She'd felt the same thing then, but it had been clouded by panic and desperation. Right now, Alina was most just confused and exhausted, both of which were feelings that got wiped away with the Darkling's touch. When his presence reached for that _something _inside of her, she simply sighed back at him, and let it rise.

She didn't shatter this time, so much as unravel. That something inside of her became something outside of her, a soft warm glow that danced over their joint hands before it reached out to the rest of the room, brighter and brighter until she had to squint against the glare.

Alina could still see him, though. It was only a brief second, but she was starting to learn that sometimes, a brief second was all the world needed to turn itself upside down. Something flashed across his face.

It looked like hope. And with their hands and their beings connected like they were now, Alina didn't feel scared. Not like she had when she'd heart that same note in the voices of the other Grisha.

_This is what you are._

**vi.**

"You have heard tales of me, I'm sure."

The Darkling had set her in one of the uncomfortable chairs at his long table, but not before calling for servants. One of them had bought more cushions. It didn't make the chair any more comfortable, but Alina knew how to be polite.

She hesitated. The tales she had heard were the kind of stories that Ana Kuya had banned, both because they scared the children in the orphanage, and because - well, the Darkling was the leader of the Second Army. Even Alina knew that you weren't really supposed to say bad things against that sort of person, although people did anyway.

He lifted the lid from a tray another of the servants had brought in, and gestured for her to help herself. "It's all right. I've heard the worst ones. If people weren't afraid of the things I might be able to do, they wouldn't feel secure in my ability to protect Ravka."

Alina turned that one over in her mind as she leaned forward, inspecting the tray. It was food, she realised. A tremulous smile touched her face when she saw the cakes. Had Grigori sent them? Or did the Darkling just like sweet things? Either answer was a good one, she felt. Still, she had to glance up at the Darkling to double check, making sure it was definitely okay for her to take one.

Her small smile was echoed on his mouth, except with more confidence. "Go on, _solnyshko._"

Sudden warmth spread through her. _Solnyshko_. Little sun. Grigori had been calling her little mouse, of course, but that only served to remind her of how powerless she had been. How frightened. _Little sun_. She reached forward and took a cake, hesitated, and then quickly snatched another. Mal would never believe this.

"I've heard stories about Darklings," she said finally. "One of them created the Unsea." That one, at least, she knew was fact. "And...you do what I just did. But with shadows."

He reached forward and took a cake of his own. "Right on all counts again. But do you understand what it is you just did?"

Alina looked down at her hands, now sticky sweet. She swallowed a mouthful of cake, and took another second to find the right word. She could only think of one. "Light," she said finally. "I made light."

"You made light," he echoed. She couldn't help but notice that half of his treat was already gone. "That is why you had to be taken from Keramzin. The Unsea is more than just a tale for scaring children. It strangles Ravka, makes us weak. What you can do may mean an end to that weakness. And Ravka has enemies, people and countries who would think nothing of burning down an orphanage if it meant destroying you."

She froze, hand halfway to her mouth. "But-" _You made light_. The other name for the Unsea was the Shadowfold. "But I'm just a child! A nobody! And Keramzin doesn't have anything to do with what I did, why would anyone-?"

She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. The thought itself was too distressing, and she could feel that thing inside her fluttering up her throat, beating at her chest. _Let me out. Let me out. I will stop them, let me out_.

The Darkling reached out again. Somehow, his fingers weren't even a little bit sticky as he laid them over her arm. Calm rocked through her, and she stared up at him with wide eyes.

_Kind_, she thought, as he looked back. _He looks kind_. And unlike Grigori, he hadn't threatened anyone she cared about to get her to behave.

"Some people in this world would rather extinguish light than let it grow in someone else's hands," he said quietly. "But there is no reason for them to harm Keramzin or anyone in it, now that you are gone. And as for you, _solnyshko_ - I will protect you."


	2. Chapter 2

**i.**

Mal didn't come that night.

There was a part of Alina that knew she was being stupid, even as she set the now-lopsided cake on her new bedside table. She had travelled saints knew how many kilometres, and was locked up tight in the Little Palace under the protection of the _Darkling_. No one was going to come to her at all, probably.

But the rest of her had noted the stares as a servant led her and her too-big _kefta_ through the halls. The rest of her had been allowed to keep her head raised this time, and so had been able to stare, open-mouthed, at the inlaid mother-of-pearl in the walls. The rest of her had gotten in a one-sided argument with the servant about the definition of dormitory when she was shown to a room of her own, and the rest of her had fallen abruptly silent upon realising that the servant couldn't argue back.

"What's your name?" she'd asked, a little desperately, but the woman was already sketching a quick bow and backing out.

The next day, she knew, she was to have a bath. Clothes would be made for her. She could have what she liked for breakfast, and while she wasn't to meet the other children yet, the Darkling was to take her to see something called a Baghra (a demon?).

Alina wished she hadn't eaten so much cake. Her stomach knotted nervously as she slowly struggled her way out of the _kefta_ and into the bed.

Her lips formed a silent _o_ as her back hit the mattress. Spindly hands patted at the sheets, like that would somehow tell her what kind of magic the thing was made out of. Could the Small Science harness clouds for sleeping on?

_Wait until Mal sees this_, thought the part of her that had saved the cake. Alina wriggled further under the covers, keeping her gaze locked on on the treat. That was what she was going to focus on. Not the cake, but on what Mal would do once they were reunited, and she could tell him everything that had happened like it was someone else's story. Someone else's Grisha, someone else's light, someone else's Darkling. Someone else's hope.

**ii.**

_Alina is at Keramzin._

_Her fingers knot tightly with Mal's, and they glare fiercely at anyone who dares to even look in their direction. _

_They won't be separated again._

_Something niggles in the back of Alina's mind, though, like she's forgotten something. But Mal is tugging on her hand to follow, and so she does, the two children racing down the long corridors of the duke's mansion. _

This is right_, she thinks, feeling the point of connection between them growing warmer. The air around them takes on a hazy quality. _This is the way it's supposed to be.

_"There you are, little mouse." Grigori looms out of nowhere, his hand clamping down on her wrist. "Remember what I said before? Behave yourself, or we'll have to punish your friend."_

_"Leave her alone!" Mal growls, his child's voice ineffective, and that's when the first explosion hits._

_"Get the girl!" a rough, accented voice yells. "_Solynshko! Solnyshko!"

_It's supposed to be an endearment, but the word twists into something violent, something awful. Alina cries out, and the world turns white._

**i****ii.**

"Don't hurt him!" The room was light where it had been dark before, but it wasn't the glaring brightness of her dream. A vague shadow moved by her bedside, holding a lamp, and her first thoughts leapt to the cool grey gaze of the Darkling.

Panicked as she was, she couldn't tell if that makes things better or worse.

"Shh." The voice was the opposite of ice-melt, warm and fluting. A girl's voice, and as Alina's eyes adjusted to the light, she realised it was being held at a height not much greater than what she herself could manage. "You are in the Little Palace. No one is going to hurt anyone, I promise."

"Ugh." The sound of another girl's voice came from the hallway, and Alina's fingers twisted in her covers as head jerked over to the door. Another dim light silhouetted three or four curious shapes there, and she caught a flash of blue eyes. "What a racket. Who is this annoying little brat?"

"Go back to bed and get your beauty sleep, Zoya," the voice from her bedside breezed. "I know you need it."

Alina didn't have a lot of experience with making friends, but she definitely knew all about making people mad. She hadn't even said anything, but that comment still probably hadn't started her off on good footing. A sniff came from the doorway, and either Zoya thought herself above replying, or couldn't think of anything to say; Alina heard a muttered _come on_, and the shapes moved back out into the hallway.

"You should ignore her," the sweet voice next to her advised. A faint _thunk_ sounded, as the lantern was set next to the cake on Alina's bedside table. "She thinks that because she's top of all her classes, she's top of everything else, too."

"Why-?" Alina's voice cracked. She swallowed, tried again, wondering why it felt so rough as she did so. "Why are you here? Why were _they_ here?"

Gentle hands found hers wound in the covers and started to tug them away, one by one.

"You were screaming. I came to help. They came to be rude." The girl gave her hands a quick squeeze. "The first couple of nights here can be scary, I don't blame you. But you're safe."

Alina felt tears prick at her eyes, and turned her head to wipe her face angrily on her shoulder. Just because someone was being nice to her was no reason to get all weepy. She thought about what she'd do if Mal were there, and the sound of explosions rung in her ears.

"Not me I'm worried about," she mumbled.

"You family will be fine, too," the voice said officiously. The hands moved away from hers towards the covers, and after a moment or two, Alina realised she was being tucked in.

She didn't protest. Her body was wrung out already, and waking up in the middle of the night probably wasn't going to help that. She had no idea who this person was, but if she wanted to looked after Alina for a couple of minutes, she was welcome to it.

_I don't have a family_. The words stuck her tongue to the roof of her mouth, blocking any further sound. If she'd had one foot put wrong for her, she wasn't about to kick the other one after it. No one needed to know she came from Keramzin.

"What's your name?" she asked instead.

The girl's moved into the flickering glow from the lamp, and for a second, Alina was convinced she was still dreaming. Golden eyes drank in the light from the lantern, set in the most perfect, elegant face she'd ever seen. Especially on a girl who couldn't be much older than herself.

"Genya." A smile tugged at full lips. "Genya Safin. What do I call you? Unless you'd prefer to go by 'annoying little brat'."

"Alina Starkov," she said immediately, _solnyshko_ ringing in her ears. "And - thank you."

"Don't worry about thanking me," Genya said lightly. "Just take a bath tomorrow. You smell."

**iv.**

The robes she was given were black.

That was only after she'd rolled around in the bath for about an hour. She'd spent ten minutes badgering the servant about how long she was _really_ allowed to stay. Finally frustrated, the woman had cautiously suggested that an hour would probably be enough, and so Alina had dutifully made use of every second.

The robes though, were something else. Back at Keramzin, dark clothing hadn't been that unusual, although black usually faded out to grey sooner rather than later. Judging by the reverential way the servant handled the robes, though, black clearly meant something different in Os Alta.

She remembered the dark shape of the Darkling the day before, and shivered. He had been kind, but Alina wasn't sure if that meant anything. Some of the older children in Keramzin had been kind too, before pushing her down or stealing her share of dessert when they had it. Sometimes, kindness was just a way of getting closer to people so you could hurt them better.

He was standing in the room she had been given when the servant led her back there, idly inspecting the cake on her bedside table. There was an amusement in that clear quartz gaze when he turned it on her, but nothing mocking.

"Leave us." The servant was gone almost before the words left his mouth. He never turned away from Alina. "If you want sweets, _solnyshko_, you only have to ask. There is no need to hoard them."

"I wasn't-" Her voice started off irritable, but _solnyshko _brought her dream back to her, and the way the servant had been so eager to leave. She swallowed, dropping her gaze. "Okay."

"You weren't?" The curiosity in his tone was gentle, but Alina gave a mute shake of her head in response. He sighed, changing the subject. "I heard you didn't sleep well, last night."

"I'm sorry," she said immediately. "I didn't mean to wake people up. I won't do it again."

"No. It's my fault."

Despite herself, she looked up, confused. He had set the cake down again, and was staring out the window, onto the grounds of the Little Palace.

Alina wasn't used to people _not_ trying to blame her for things.

"I gave you information yesterday that you may not have been ready to hear. I wanted you to understand that you were keeping Keramzin safe by being here, and ease your worries, but it seems I've made things worse for you. I'm the one who should be apologising."

Despite herself, despite the fact that she had indeed woken up screaming the night before, Alina bristled. "I'm - I can handle it," she protested, cutting off the word _strong_. She wasn't strong, she'd already proved that, but she still wasn't some pampered baby who didn't know what to do with fear.

She didn't want to be coddled.

"You're a child, _solnyshko._ You aren't supposed to handle things."

"My name is Alina," she muttered, and earned only a chuckle in response.

"Come," he said easily, sweeping past her to the door. "Baghra doesn't like to be kept waiting."

**v.**

Baghra didn't like much of anything, Alina learnt.

"Hurry up," a harsh voice bit, as the Darkling pushed open the door. "You're letting the hot air out."

If the Darkling was ice melt, this woman was the permafrost. It took everything in Alina not to turn around and walk out the door again - or worse, hide behind her companion.

"So this is your Sun Summoner," Baghra grated. "Step closer girl, let me see you."

Startled, she glanced up at the Darkling, who inclined his head back at her. _Sun Summoner? Is that what I am?_

One clawed hand grasped her chin as she stepped forward, turning her face in the dim light. For all that the hand was bent like an old woman's, there wasn't a wrinkle to be seen on Baghra's harsh features. That, Alina decided, was far more unsettling than being handled like a side of beef.

"Not much to her," the woman groused finally, letting go.

That was true.

"She's eight," the Darkling said dryly. "There isn't supposed to be much to anyone at eight."

"I just thought that Ravka's saviour would have more meat on her bones, that's all."

Ravka's _what?_

Baghra cackled at the look on her face. "How much have you told her, boy?"

"Enough." He seemed irritated, and Alina couldn't tell if he meant that he had told her enough, or if he had had enough. "Teach her. Help her reach the true extent of her power - as you have all your best students."

There was a strange twist to his mouth that Alina couldn't begin to understand, and the dark humour was gone from Baghra's voice when she spoke again.

"And if _that_ is not enough?"

Those quartz eyes remained clear as it flickered down to Alina, offering her a kindness in his gaze, even if it didn't reach his mouth. "It will be."

**vi.**

When she got back to her room that afternoon, the cake was gone.

* * *

_Hey guys, thanks for making it to chapter two! I hope you like the story so far. Next chapter will be Alina settling into life in the Little Palace and getting to know the people around her better. Drop me a note to let me know what you think!_


	3. Chapter 3

**i.**

The next morning, Alina created her first ever stunned silence.

Actually, it might have been her second, but she had been too busy screaming and crying when the Grisha Examiners had dragged her power out of her that she hadn't really noticed _what_ their reaction was.

There was no avoiding this, though. It started with a whisper, an elbow curving sharply into a set of ribs. Like fire through a forest, Alina watched her presence flare through the throng of children's faces in the mess hall, leaving nothing but quiet in its wake.

At first, she thought the Darkling had decided to accompany her, was maybe standing just out of her line of sight. She twisted her head, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Just the disappearing charcoal back of the servant who had shown her to the hall, and the black of her own shadow.

_Black_. She scanned the scene before her, noting the colours. Just like the real Grisha - red, blue, purple. A brief flash of white, surrounded by empty space. But no black.

Alina began to wish she'd asked for her old clothes back. They were ratty and faded, but she doubted they would have parted the crowd the way her current outfit did, as she hesitantly stepped into the sea of other students.

Almost instinctively, her eyes sought out the other outsider, that flash of white. Like everyone else, the wearer was looking at her. Unlike everyone else, Alina recognised who it was. It was hard to forget a face like Genya Safin's, even if she'd been half-blind and three-quarters asleep the last time she'd seen it.

Without really thinking about it, her body turned in that direction. She had just enough time to notice gold eyes widening, before a navy flutter broke her line of sight.

"I am Zoya." The voice was instantly recognisable, although Alina hadn't seen her face the night before. Looking at her, she wished sourly that she couldn't see her now. Maybe Zoya wasn't as beautiful as Genya, but she had hair like sable and eyes a richer blue than the sky on a summer's day. And there was none of Genya's kindness in that gaze. "Come, sit with us! Tell me your name, where you are from. Being new in this place can be _so_ troublesome."

"They call me 'annoying little brat' sometimes," Alina grumbled, before she could stop herself. She watched the realisation hit Zoya's face, and tried not to wince. She'd woken up screaming the night before as well, although this time no one had come to investigate.

There was a pause, before the other girl smiled. Try as she might, Alina couldn't see anything in it that wasn't genuine. That made her even more wary.

"So you are the one who has been having such trouble sleeping?" She sighed, her lips forming a sympathetic pout. She couldn't have been more than ten to Alina's eight, but there was something about her that seemed that much older. It was the same with all the children around her, it occurred to Alina. Like they weren't really children at all, but small adults in waiting, who knew too much of the world already. "It will pass. Soon, you will think of this place as home."

Zoya neither apologised, nor stood by her remark from the other night. Of course, you didn't need to ask for forgiveness if you didn't think you'd done something wrong. Whatever spell her black clothes had cast over everyone else, it seemed like it had only half worked on Zoya.

"It is not your place to be inviting anyone to sit anywhere," a new voice said flatly. An older boy in red had worked his way through the crowd, and was eyeing Alina with a frown on his face. "If she is wearing the Darkling's colours, then she should be with the Corporalki."

The boy didn't offer an explanation for this, but he didn't seem to think it needed one. Alina started to edge her way around the pair as Zoya's eyes flashed, and she turned a sweet smile on him. "Are you suggesting that she should not eat here, where the Darkling has clearly decided she must be? Because I see no Coporalki, Ivan."

Alina missed whatever it was the teenager growled back, her slight form slipping away without too much trouble. There were a few snickers throughout the crowd, but she thought they might be directed at the other two Grisha students rather than her.

Genya was shaking her head as Alina slipped into one of the empty seats next to her. "You should have chosen one of them to sit with, Alina Starkov."

But her eyes said they were glad to see her, or at least that was what Alina thought before Genya lowered her lashes.

"I think Zoya would eat me instead of breakfast. And what would I talk to a teenage boy about?"

"Didn't you think there might be a reason why there are so many empty seats around me?" Genya's voice was soft.

"Well." Alina pretended to consider the idea. "I thought it might be because you smell."

She didn't, of course, or at least not of anything nasty. But the comment was enough to pull a smile back onto Genya's beautiful face, and Alina felt a surge of pride.

She wanted to ask why Genya dressed in white, but the other girl did her the courtesy of not asking after her black clothes, and so Alina held her tongue. Instead, she asked her what Corporalki meant, as the rest of the children slowly crept in, inexorable as the tide.

Ivan and Zoya broke off their argument, but apparently Alina was stopping the sea today, too. While chair or two got eaten up by the crowd, there remained a solid, empty circle around the girls in black and white as Genya quietly explained the different Grisha ranks to her.

**ii.**

Classes were a blur. Alina wasn't a bad student, but it was hard to be a good one when you had twenty other children elbowing each other away to get the seats closest to you.

Genya, being older, took different classes, some of which apparently involved private tutoring like Alina's were supposed to. Alina knew getting attached was a terrible idea - she could still feel Mal's fingers clenched around hers, and wanted to weep with the ache of them missing - but the loss of Genya's calm, cool presence made it that much harder to focus on lessons that were already like nothing she had ever experienced.

_Ravka's saviour_, Baghra's voice taunted in the back of her head. The Darkling hadn't elaborated on that, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. Grisha was hard enough to get her head around for now, and the screams from Keramzin in her dreams still lingered.

That wasn't the only thing keeping her distracted, however. There was a warmth in her chest that had never been there before - or, if it had, she certainly hadn't noticed. When she closed her eyes, she saw only brightness, and her fingers tingled like she was holding them to a fire after a day out in the snow. Like the Darkling, Baghra was an amplifier, and she had made Alina light up that tiny old hut the day before.

Alina didn't entirely understand everything that was happening to her. Words like saviour and the Shadowfold seemed like such massive, distant things, even when they were being said right in front of her. What she _did_ understand was that, even though Baghra was cranky and confusing and more than a little bit scary, Alina's entire body vibrated at the prospect of getting to go see her that afternoon.

Of being taught, as her best students had been.

**iii.**

She had thought it would be more difficult.

It seemed like it should be. She had struggled so hard against being discovered, at Keramzin (not that she'd known what she was hiding), that it seemed wrong somehow for it to be easy. For Baghra to bark at her to summon, and for Alina to reach deep inside herself and pull out some of that stuff that turned into the sun in her hands.

But she was alone, and at times she could pretend that the warm whisper of the light was actually the tug of a pudgy hand in hers. More than that, her nightmares didn't leave her; she noticed some of the more tired-looking girls glaring at her when they thought she couldn't see. If Keramzin was going to burn every night, she wanted it to be for a good reason.

"What are you smiling about?" Baghra snapped, thumping her cane on the floor.

Alina eyed her warily, looking up from the glow of her fingertips. Ana Kuya's quick hand was no match for that thing.

"I've seen worms with a brighter shine," the woman continued. "You think you can be proud of a thing like that? Fjerdan assassins shooting you in the face ought to feed your ego well, then!"

The accents in her nightmares, incidentally, had taken on a distinctly Fjerdan flavour.

"I'm still _new_ at this," she growled back, sounding more petulant than she was really comfortable with. Baghra drew a loud _ouch_ from her with her cane against her shins, and the light sputtered out.

"What does new have to do with anything? You were born with this power, girl, just like you were born knowing how to breathe. Stop treating it like it's something you have to get used to!"

"I _do_ have to get used to it," she muttered, dancing out of reach of the cane this time.

But she breathed, and the light came.

**iv.**

Her thoughts strayed to the Darkling more than once. The other students seemed to think she had some sort of deep and secret connection with him - she hadn't shown them anything special, after all, in either powers or scholastic talent. Alina even heard it whispered that she was his daughter, the next Darkling being hidden in plain sight.

She didn't think the Darkling was a father at all, not that an orphan had much cause to recognise parental instinct. But then, maybe that was it - they both felt alone in the world in some intangible way, something she could never explain to the other children.

She also didn't see him as much as they seemed to think she did. Alina got the impression that he didn't usually spend a whole lot of time around eight year olds. She thought about informing him that she might actually be nine by now, but she didn't think that would help matters.

"You're still having nightmares," he said softly one afternoon, when he was done asking how her lessons had gone. They were sitting in the same room she had been brought to on her first day, and she kicked her legs a little restlessly as they shared a platter of cakes again. The sounds of construction in the near distance occasionally interrupted them. Alina had done her best to be honest with him, and the faint smile that had crossed his mouth when she'd told him about her summoning had been worth the small frown over her other lessons.

She blushed, and whipped her head around so he wouldn't see it. "They're not that bad."

"Bad enough to wake up the other children, still," he pointed out. Alina wondered if it was possible to die from too much blood in the face.

"Well, I'm sorry about that," she bit out. And she was, although her tone made it sound like she felt the exact opposite. "I _know_ I should be used to it. It's not like this is even the first time this is happened."

She squeezes her eyes shut, and the fire from her dreams mingles with an older, very real disaster. She'd had nightmares when she'd first come to Keramzin, too. Slowly, surely, they'd faded away as she'd come to realise that even though she was away from everything she'd ever knew, that didn't mean she had to be alone.

Mal had come. And she'd thought that meant the nightmares would be gone for good, but it seemed like they had just been kept at bay. And now her buffer from the world was gone.

"You were taken from your home to Keramzin."

"Keramzin is my home now," she said automatically, and then swallowed. "Um. I mean-"

"And you were taken from that place and brought here," he interjected smoothly, and there was something like understanding in his voice. "Many Grisha children find the transition difficult. But most are not uplifted twice in such a short time period. You feel unsettled. Like you don't belong."

She hesitated for a long moment. She had never actually _seen_ the Darkling do anything that could be construed as remotely dangerous or threatening, but stories didn't come from nowhere.

"I wear black," she said finally, careful to cut anything out of her tone that might sound accusatory. "No one else wears black, except for you. It makes me different."

The fact that people were falling over themselves to get to know her didn't help, didn't make her feel anymore welcome. It only confirmed that she was something strange.

"You are different." Something flickered behind those grey eyes, turning them warm. "And it's not because you wear black. You wear black because you're different."

"That doesn't help at all," she huffed, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

He laughed, reaching out to gently tug her fingers away. Abruptly, all her warring emotions were wiped out, flattened out by a wave of easy certainty. Without thinking about it, she tried to keep her hand in his as he moved to pull away.

This time, it was the Darkling's turn to hesitate. He stared at her for a moment, before allowing her small hand to remain tangled with his fine, pale fingers.

"You aren't different because you don't belong, _solnyshko_," he told her quietly. "You are different because you belong here more than they ever will."

**v.**

"It's driving everyone crazy, you know," Genya said, as the two girls walked arm and arm towards Alina's room. Alina felt her heels drag with every step; she knew it was irrational, but the room was where her nightmares happened, and she occasionally wondered if it was the source. If somehow all her confusion and fear had seeped out into the walls, collected itself during the day only to smack her around at night.

"What?" Alina blinked, earning herself an eyeroll.

"Not knowing what you can do. Usually people talk about it, or show off. Or if they don't, their clothes give an indication. But you just showed up out of the blue, the Darkling's favourite, wearing his colours, and no one knows why." Genya gave a happy little sigh. "It's wonderful."

She wrinkled her nose. Her door loomed up before them. "Why is it _wonderful_?"

Genya even shrugged elegantly. "It's a lot easier to pretend that the stares aren't for me when I walk with you."

Without warning, Alina's feet stopped where she was. Her arm slipped out of her friend's - but could she call her that? Grateful to be around someone who didn't seem intent on pleasing her (or plotting her untimely demise, it was hard to tell with Zoya), she'd never really stopped to consider why Genya would _want_ to be her friend.

Was it really just because black clothes overwhelmed white?

_You are different because you belong here more than they ever will_. The words had warmed her at the time, but the Darkling wasn't here now, and it was hard to hold onto that feeling without him. Genya, aware that something was wrong, frowned back at her.

Alina hadn't learnt to hide her emotions, like Genya and other children such as Zoya seemed to be so good at doing. Her hurt and confusion was slapped across her features for anyone to read, and Genya let out a low cry of dismay, hurrying back to her. Gentle, delicate fingers wrapped around hers, squeezing tight.

"I haven't asked," she reminded her. "And I won't. Not unless you want to tell me. You've been so good, not badgering me about what I have to wear, staying with me even though I'm sure you've heard tales from the others-"

"I haven't," Alina said quickly, feeling something like relief crawl over her. "I mean, I think people have tried, but I don't really listen. I already hate how they talk about me, I wouldn't want to do that to you."

A smile trembled on that perfect mouth. "You aren't anything like what I would have expected a favourite of the Darkling's to be."

"I think that's a good thing," she muttered. Genya's laugh broke through the threat of tears, and she pushed on ahead to open Alina's door.

And stopped.

"Alina?" Her voice was uncertain. "Didn't you used to have - well, things?"

"What?"

She didn't get an eyeroll this time; instead, there was genuine concern on Genya's face. Alina shuffled forward to peer into the room.

There was a bed in there, stripped bare of anything like sheets. And that was it.

"There you are." The Darkling's ice melt voice cascaded over her from behind. She yelped, spinning around, but not before she caught sight of Genya's eyes going very, very wide.

His face was utterly blank, enough to make her shiver. His gaze flicked, and she somehow knew he had caught the motion. Alina felt abruptly small and very insignificant, and wondered if this was what the rest of the world felt like all the time in his presence.

"Walk with me," he said after a moment. "Genya. I know you have a class soon."

There was nothing in his words that counted as a dismissal, but Genya ducked her head and walked off immediately, not even turning her head to look back. Alina waited for the Darkling's demeanor to soften (it did), before scowling up at him.

"Her next class isn't for nearly an hour, and I'm not seeing Baghra until the afternoon. We were going to spend that time studying. And where's my stuff?"

"I will help with your studies," he said, like that was the point. He started to walk, and Alina lurched after him. "As for your belongings, I've had them moved. You room wasn't...suitable."

A frisson of fear cracked through Alina, but she slammed it shut. He hadn't gone through so much trouble already, only to decide that _she _wasn't suitable. At least, she hoped.

He walked fast, though, and while her stamina had much improved since coming to the Little Palace, it was still hard for her to keep out. "Wait," she puffed, reaching out the snag a fold of his _kefta_ without thinking.

The Darkling stilled, and for a second she thought she'd done something horribly, terribly wrong. But then he gave an exaggerated sigh. "I forgot how short your legs are."

"They're not that short!"

"Short enough."

He seemed to take some kind of pleasure in the way she drew herself up in outrage, which was _mean_. "You really are cruel," she mumbled, and earned herself a surprised laugh.

"Only when called for, _solnyshko_."

He took her out of the building reserved for the younger Grisha students, across the grounds to the Little Palace. He was leading her towards the same room they always met in, the one she knew sat outside his personal chambers. _That_ made no sense at all, not until he shifted direction slightly, and Alina remembered the sound of construction nearby the last time she had visited him. He led her, not to his rooms, but to a door nearby them. There were two guards in charcoal - _oprichniki_, Genya had called them, members of the Darkling's personal guard - stationed outside it.

"Our best Grisha move into the Little Palace to continue their education," he said. "And one day, you will take your own lessons in here, instead of the students' building. But I have no wish to uproot you a third time, and the children's dormitories are no place to settle, anyway. I thought you could use a place of your own to call home. It might - help."

Alina was so used to being certain around the Darkling, it took her a second or two to register that he seemed - less sure of himself, somehow. Before now, he had always been sure, calm. In control.

Now, she realised, he wasn't. He didn't know if she would like this or not, and he wanted her to. She felt like pointing out that he could have just _asked_, but he was holding the door open for her and what she saw took her breath away.

It was simple. The Darkling's taste didn't run towards ostentatious, she thought, or at least not blindingly so. The room wasn't a bedroom, but an antechamber done in rich blues and soft golds, the occasional edging of black here and there. It held a table, and chairs that actually looked comfortable. A plush sofa sat fatly alongside one wall.

"The bedroom is through there." He nodded towards a door carved out of some dark wood. "All of your things were moved into that room, although I noticed you don't have many personal items yet. If there's something you want, _solnyshko_, you only have to ask."

Her lips parted, and then paused. She could point out that this was only moving her further away from the other students, when she had already told him how separate she felt. But his words lingered in her mind still. _You are different because you belong here more than they ever will_.

She couldn't think of anything that would establish that difference and belonging more than this. The black clothes had been one thing, but this was on a whole other level. And Alina found that she…

Didn't mind.

Her only friend aside from the Darkling was Genya, and Genya didn't fit either. Maybe she didn't have her own set of rooms like this, but Alina could invite her over without too much trouble. Genya might even prefer it - she had just said that she hated being stared at, and surely the older Grisha wouldn't care about two little girls wandering around as much as the people their own age did.

There were more people who _wanted_ to be her friend, of course, but Alina hated that. Hated the voices, the press of bodies, the way she couldn't tell who was sincere and who wasn't. Grigori had seemed nice, but once she was no longer his responsibility, he had disappeared - she hadn't seen him or the cakes he'd promised once he'd handed her over to the Darkling. She'd already proven to herself that morning that she found it hard enough to trust even Genya.

And there would definitely be room for Mal on that sofa. If he ever came.

"I love it," she said, turning her face up to The Darkling and smiling. "What else would I need to ask for?"

He smiled down at her, and it melted the sharp planes of his face into something kind. "I hope you're always this easily pleased."

**vi.**

He left after that. Not just her presence, but the Little Palace, going off somewhere with the Second Army. Alina threw herself into her studies, and didn't bother telling herself she didn't miss him.


	4. Chapter 4

**i.**

Alina's new rooms changed things.

Maybe it was because she had been so unused to people looking at her before, that she was so attuned to them now. Alina imagined that if people looked at you all the time, you'd start to get used to it - and it occurred to her uneasily that in the future, that might happen to her as well.

But it hadn't happened yet, so when the eager desire to get to know her shifted into something more calculating, cautious, she noticed. People no longer fell over themselves trying to sit next to her, but instead took their time, communicating amongst themselves with a strange mixture of whispers and Significant Looks.

Slowly, Alina started to realise that a hierarchy was forming. Instead of being first in first served, she noticed that the people sitting nearest to her in class settled, like a pool of water after something large and unnatural is tossed into it. There was a boy, Sergei, who simultaneously tried to assert his superiority while deferring to her, and a girl called Marie, who seemed to take Alina's natural reticence as a challenge, chattering a little nervously at her throughout the day.

Actually, both of them seemed nervous, a strange glint in gazes that they threw at her a little too often to be natural. It took her a couple of days to realise that they were both seeking praise, and waiting to be dismissed, teetering on the edge of wanting to please – wanting to please _her._

There was a part of Alina that liked that, although it was still overshadowed by her earlier uneasiness. Still, that uneasiness might have started to ebb, especially as she began to slowly respond to the overtures of her fellow students, if not for the fact that even Genya's attitude was starting to change.

She was definitely trying to remain warm, but Alina wasn't stupid. She could sense a wall between them now that hadn't been there before, a careful distance that the girl was constructing. She didn't shy away when Alina took her arm, but she had stopped offering it herself, and she outright refused to come and visit Alina in her new rooms. She'd been in and out of Alina's neat little room in the dormitory, but apparently the Little Palace was beyond her.

And the teasing stopped. Genya had always been kind, but now that was all she was. It was only when Alina realised that the other girl hadn't called her smelly in about a week, that she also realised she'd barely thought about Mal in that time period.

Instantly, guilt swamped her. Between classes and the other students and worrying about Genya's new aloofness, there hadn't been a lot time to focus on how much she missed him, but that - that wasn't the point. Not thinking about missing him was like saying she didn't missed him, and there was still that quiet ache in her chest that said she very much did.

Except, it was quiet now. Alina gnawed at her lower lip, flopping back on the giant, golden bed in her quarters to stare at the ceiling. The night sky was splashed across it, exactly as it would appear if there had been no roof at all.

Well. Not exactly - it was only the afternoon. But when evening fell, it did feel a little like being outside. Alina groaned, her thoughts still flitting around like annoying, buzzing flies. _F_ocus!

Did Mal miss her? She was sure he had to. They'd been each other's sanctuaries, and a couple of months in Os Alta couldn't change that. Of course, that only made her feel worse. How awful would it be, if he showed up some day and she didn't recognise him? Didn't even remember him?

_But he's not a Grisha_, a silent, smirking thought pointed out. _How is he going to make it here if he's normal? Powerless? They don't just let orphans waltz on into the Little Palace because you miss them._

_The _oprichniki _aren't Grisha_, she argued back, wincing as it occurred to her that she was fighting with herself. Maybe that was why Genya had started pulling away. Because she was going crazy.

But the thought of the _oprichniki_ stuck in her head, and after a moment or two, Alina shot back up again. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she hopped down, pushing through the door into her receiving room, and then through the entrance to her quarters. Two _oprichnik_ guards stood there, etched in black and gold, although she thought they were different ones than had been there the last time she had looked.

"Excuse me," she said. One of them started, and then blinked down at her.

"Did you need something, _moi_ - uh, _moi_—"

He didn't know what to call her, Alina realised. "Alina is fine," she said quickly, saving him the trouble of stumbling around for a title she definitely didn't need or deserve.

He looked a little green at the thought of using her given name, but swallowed and nodded. "Can I help you?"

Her head bobbed seriously. "I was wondering where you got your gloves from."

"My gloves? Are you cold?"

"No, I just wanted a pair. It's important, I promise."

There was a beat of silence, before his face softened out of surprise and into kindness. Quickly, he shucked off his own gloves and held them out to her. "Here, _m_ - Alina. If it is important, take these."

A protest rose up in her throat, only to die there. It was important. And surely he wouldn't have offered them if it was a big deal? Thus reassured, she flashed him a quick smile and reached up, taking the gloves gratefully.

"Thank you! This will be very helpful." On a flash of inspiration, she added, "What's your name? I can tell the Darkling you were so kind."

Whiteness chased away the remnants of green in his face. He must, Alina thought, be very pale.

"Erik, miss," he said after a beat.

"_Alina._"

"Yes, miss."

**ii.**

The gloves went into the bottom drawer of her dresser, once she'd dumped out everything that was already in there. It was a lonely looking place when she finished, the accessories tucked forlornly into one corner, but Alina promised herself it wouldn't stay that way.

That was how bits and pieces of Os Alta started to make their way into her bedroom. She acquired a full set of cutlery over four separate nights, and while she couldn't manage a proper plate, she _did _pilfer a delicately painted porcelain cup and saucer. After she popped her head out another day and ask another _oprichnik_ where she might get a hat like hers, Alina found that scraps of the black and gold uniform started to make their way into her receiving room, until eventually she had a full set.

She spent a good hour trying to make the boots fit in the drawer without taking up too much space. No doubt the uniform would be a wrinkled mess when the time came to pull it out again, but Alina wasn't really focussing on that. She didn't think Mal would, either

(She asked for extra hot chocolate when the servants bought her dinner tray, and carefully parcelled it out to the guards).

They were small, silly things mostly – but that was sort of the point. Orphans learned how to take things nobody would miss all that much. The drawer was a record of her time in the Little Palace, and something like insurance.

If she had all of these things ready and waiting for him, to tell him about and share, she wouldn't forget him.

**iii.**

The Darkling, when he returned, brought with him a set of intricately painted nesting dolls. There had been some at Keramzin, she could remember that, but those had been worn, the faces rubbed away by years and years of being handled by sticky little fingers.

These were new, and they were all hers. Not used to receiving gifts, Alina stuttered out something like a thank you, which he immediately waved away.

"You'll find I spent much of my time away from the Little Palace. If I don't bring you gifts, how will I know you will remember me?"

Alina stilled. She couldn't quite recognise the flash of emotion that flared through her, but she didn't like it. Concern, maybe? Worry?

She wasn't doing anything wrong by saving things for Mal. But she still didn't want the Darkling to know.

"I don't think—" she said, realising she'd been quiet for a moment too long. She began to unstack the dolls, piecing them together again and lining them up on his long, dark table. They were Grisha, alternating red and blue and purple. "I don't think that anyone has ever forgotten you."

His gaze fell upon her, and for a second, Alina felt like she was being observed by a total stranger. This was not the quiet, easy-going man who had been chuckling at her comments and seeing to her comforts. Those grey eyes pinned her in place, and she squirmed a little, not liking it.

That seemed to snap him out of it. He blinked, and the stranger was gone, the Darkling she had come to know in some small way back in his place.

"You've been sleeping well?" he asked, as though nothing had happened.

"…mostly," she said, eyeing him suspiciously. He bore her stare with good grace, and there was no hint of that cool steel that had just about run her through.

"And if I were to ask your guards, would they say the same thing?"

"I didn't know, you put them there." There was a sullen huff to her tone that Alina didn't care about. He'd unsettled her, and she was going to make sure he knew that that wasn't okay.

"Ah." Good humour laced that quiet voice. "I've offended you."

"You were _creepy_."

"I was?" Two dark eyebrows flew upwards. "Well, if you say so, that must be true. After being on the road so long, I couldn't be tired, or distracted, or hungry…"

It hadn't _felt_ like a tired look to Alina, but then, she'd never seen him any of those things either. The Darkling did have a strange face, it was true – beautiful, of course, but how often did you call a man beautiful? It was strange. Maybe it made strange hungry faces, too.

"If you're hungry, we can have cake," she announced.

"Then I suppose I am hungry."

He asked her about her classes, and she skimmed over the material, focussing instead on the new behaviour of her fellow students. The Darkling didn't seem all that surprised, and he didn't exactly offer helpful advice, either.

"It's the way of the world, _solnyshko_," he told her with a simple shrug of one shoulder. "They have realised that you aren't simply some curiosity I've picked up, but a Grisha with real power. They are starting to treat you seriously."

"But I haven't _done_ anything." And she didn't think that explained Genya, who had never treated her like a curiosity.

"But now they know you can. Watch them, carefully. You can learn as much from the people around you as from your lessons, if you pay attention." There was a pause. "You haven't shown them what you can do."

It wasn't a question. Alina supposed it didn't need to be – he definitely would have heard if she'd been flashing her light powers around. She looked down at her dolls, and fidgeted a little.

"I wasn't sure if…I was allowed to. And it's not like I can do anything impressive, anyway."

"Allowed to?" He seemed taken aback by that. "Your power is yours, _solnyshko_. If you want to use it, use it. As for impressive, the smallest flicker from your fingertips is already more impressive than the entire Second Army."

_Ravka's saviour_. She felt like she was missing something, but there was no putting her finger on it. Alina might have been getting used to the strangeness of her new life, but she was still only young. Figuring out what any adult wanted was hard, much less this one.

Later, she stacked up the dolls again and set them on top of her dresser. All except the smallest, whole one. That, she tucked into one of the gloves in her bottom drawer, and refused to feel bad about.

**iv.**

Zoya sat next to her at lunch.

Genya was still on Alina's other side, of course, although there was more of a gap between them than there had been in past weeks. Alina tried to tell herself it didn't bother her.

Zoya had taken the place of the same boy she'd fought with, all those weeks ago. It took Alina a second, but she saw the cleverness in that - Ivan was nearly fourteen now, closer to graduating than anyone else whose name she had been able to remember. If he pressed the matter of sitting next to Alina, Zoya would be able to shrug it off as a much older student taking precedence, rather than Alina showing favour to anyone.

Ivan had sat next to her yesterday. He hadn't said much, and Alina honestly _preferred_ that, but Zoya had never sat next to her before. She still wasn't used to the politics of this place, but it was simple mathematics to understand that giving one person a seat two days in a row while rejecting someone who had never sat by her was a sign of favouritism. Whether she actually meant that or not.

So when Zoya sat down, Alina did nothing. Ivan scowled, but it was directed at the beautiful girl in blue, not her. Internally, she breathed a sigh of relief. Ivan might not have been a Corporalnik yet, but that didn't mean he didn't have the skills of a Heartrender.

Zoya shook her hair back over her shoulders, giving a bright smile that bypassed her eyes entirely. "I thought I would save you from a morning of being grunted at."

"Who's going to save us from you?" Genya murmured, and Alina stifled a giggle. She hadn't heard the girl say anything that could be considered 'sharp' in weeks.

A cool gaze flickered over to Genya, assessing. Alina had seen that look on other people what felt like a thousand times since she had befriended the other girl, and prepared herself to get her hackles up when the inevitable dismissive glance away came.

But it didn't. Zoya simply titled her head to one side, stacking her plate with food. "If you are afraid of me, Genya, you may leave. You wouldn't be the first."

It should have sounded ridiculous coming from so small a person. But Zoya made it sound as threatening as anything Alina had ever heard an actual Grisha say - which of course only had Genya lifting her chin stubbornly.

"The day a walrus like you makes me afraid of anything is the day I leave the Little Palace and never come back."

There was a moment of silence. Neither girl said anything, but the atmosphere was suddenly oppressive. Alina held her breath, afraid that if she shifted even a centimetre, something would explode. Zoya's eyes dipped to the white of Genya's clothes, but Genya's jaw only tightened further. Another beat passed, and then Zoya turned back to her breakfast, like nothing had happened.

And maybe nothing had. But the tremble in Genya's hand as she gripped her knife tighter implied otherwise.

"I thought," Zoya said, "that I would offer my services as tutor. Obviously I don't know what you can do, but you are taking a heavier load of Etherealki-based classes. I'm the best in my year, and better than most people above me."

Alina's eyebrows shot up. It was arrogant, maybe, but the other girl wasn't bragging. Rather, she spoke with the self-assured tone of someone who knew that every word she was saying was true. Genya's tremor made her want to say no outright, made her want to turn her back on the other girl and tease her friend, ease the tension. But there was a curiosity in her too, something that wanted to sink its claws into the situation and dig a little deeper.

_Watch them, carefully. You can learn as much from the people around you as your lessons, if you pay attention._

She resisted the urge to press her face into her breakfast and leave it there. This was all so _exhausting_. Wasn't it just supposed to be school? Why did it matter who got to sit next to her? Why did Zoya - who she was pretty sure would never have approached her if she had been wearing some other colour - want to tutor her? Why did she have to weigh all of these things up as though she were choosing to send someone to their death?

Power, Alina decided, was overrated.

"Why do you want to?" she asked. Other than that first encounter, they hadn't exchanged a word. She definitely didn't think the other girl had any interest in helping her out of the goodness of her heart.

Zoya sniffed, chewing and swallowing before she deigned to reply.

"I'm not going to embarrass either of us by pretending it doesn't have anything to do with who you are. And I'm not going to pretend to be all _nice_ and sappy to get on your good side." She didn't glance at Genya, be she didn't have to. "I think we can help each other. That's it."

Not so long ago, she would have turned to Genya to get her opinion, or even just a smile of encouragement. Now, though, she simply turned the idea over in her head. It wasn't only classes Zoya could help her with. The girl had a confidence that even Genya couldn't match, an innate belief that she was always right.

Alina _wanted_ that. Little mouse, Grigori had called her, and he had been right. The Darkling himself had separated her from everyone else in Ravka, marked her out as special, but what had she done to claim that? Had nightmares and been moved away from the others to stop them from waking up?

She hadn't even displayed her _real_ power to them, too caught up in her thoughts and worries to think about proving herself.

"Fine," she said, spooning some extra sugar onto her porridge. She'd eaten half of it already, but it still tasted bland. "Then let's help each other."

* * *

_First off, I just want to thank everyone who has taken the time to review and favourite/alert the story so far! The feedback is great, and I super appreciate it. I do want to note, though, that I work full time and have other projects/hobbies that aren't this particular fic - I'm updating as fast as I can, I promise, and you don't need to worry about me abandoning the story because there's more than a three day gap between chapters. _

_Anyway, thank you again, and I hope you liked this latest chapter c:  
_


	5. Chapter 5

**i.**

The light flared bright, scouring every dark inch of the dark cottage, leaving Alina breathless with laughter.

At least, until a cane jabbed her in the side.

"Ouch," she yelped, dancing away. The light winked out of existence, like someone had slammed a door shut on it.

"Where's your head at, girl?" Baghra demanded, scowling at her. "When I tell you to focus, you focus. You don't set the whole place alight like you're leading some sort of parade."

"I've never seen a parade with a Sun Summoner at the head," Alina sniffed back, rubbing the ache above her hip.

"Oh, now Ravka's saviour is too good for parades?"

"I'm not—"

But she broke off with a huff, recognising that there was absolutely no point in arguing that point with the woman. Instead, she changed tactics.

"You spent weeks and weeks hitting me for not being able to make it big enough. I just lit up this whole hut, and now you want me to make it small again? Make up your mind!"

"Power is nothing without control," Baghra spat. "Yes, yes, you can light up a hut. And if the walls of the hut weren't here to stop it, you might light up the forest. And when you command troops in the field, you can blind your own people as well as the enemy."

"Troops?"

Baghra surveyed her without pity or remorse. "Some Grisha are weak enough that a lack of fine control is no matter. You do not have that luxury. You'll learn, and you'll learn well. There is no 'or else'. That's your option."

_The smallest flicker from your fingertips is already more impressive than the entire Second Army._ Alina gritted her teeth. "Well, I'm not leading troops at the moment!"

"Is that the problem? I'm sure it could be arranged."

It sounded like a threat. Something she should have been afraid of. But in the safety of the Little Palace, memories of war were a distant thing for Alina. She hadn't lied when she told the Darkling that her nightmares had lessened, and when she had them now, she woke whimpering more than screaming. It wasn't Keramzin she worried for anymore, but Mal. And she didn't worry about Mal getting hurt.

She worried about him disappearing. It was harder and harder to remember the boy's face as the days slipped away, even as she continued to add dutifully to her drawer (the most recent addition was a jewelled brooch given to her by Marie, in the shape of a butterfly).

He wasn't the only thing she worried about disappearing.

-And the point was, Alina's fears did not include leading troops. The girl pictured, for a moment, her own tiny form at the head of her _oprichniki_ and an assortment of Grisha students, charging into the Shadowfold. Maybe her fears _did_ contain a bit of Baghra, but not enough to stop the quiet giggle that escaped her at the image.

Baghra just looked disgusted. "Do it again, already."

**ii.**

Alina didn't do it again. Releasing her power these days was a joy, throwing off her restraints and letting it slip free, luxuriating in the sensation. it felt _good_, and that had been such a rare feeling for her in her recent life, that she failed to see the point in reining it in.

Baghra could mutter about controlling troops all she liked. If it was really all that important, the Darkling would tell Alina to do it, like he had told Baghra to train her. Plus, if Baghra was such a great teacher, wouldn't she be able to get Alina to do what she wanted sooner or later, anyway?

She wasn't hurting anyone by doing what she wanted, just for a little bit. And if the idea of forcing her power in on itself, making it smaller than itself, made her want to throw up? No one had to know that.

"Do I have something on my face?" Zoya's suspicious voice interrupted Alina's musings.

She started, having fallen out of the habit of being interrupted. These days, people usually spent at least five minutes judging whether or not she looked like she was feeling open to being talked at. Maybe she had been musing long enough that Zoya had already done it, but Alina rather doubted that. The other girl tried, but she no matter how good she was at everything else, she was terrible at deferring to people.

"That's not going to be on the test, right?"

Blue eyes narrowed for a second, like the other girl was reading the words in the air, analysing them for hidden meanings.

"Saints, Zoya, it was a joke," Alina muttered, dropping her head to her book.

Genya's absence throbbed keenly, if an empty space could be felt. She had tried, for the first couple of days, to keep her friend with her as a sort of safety net when she studied with Zoya. But the two of them had been awful, snarking and sniping at each other until even Alina had to admit they were getting nothing done.

She had her lessons with Zoya when Genya had her own private tutoring, now. And she suspected that the fact that those lessons occasionally bled into time that Genya _didn't_ have lessons wasn't an accident, but the things Zoya taught her were so interesting, she couldn't exactly get upset about it. The girl's sharp tongue made her a miserable excuse for a friend, but it certainly gave the lessons an edge.

"So my face is a joke now?"

Alina eyed her for a moment. She looked like the doll the Darkling had sent back while he was out of the capitol, small face perfectly formed and stunning.

"Yes."

A titter was heard from nearby, and Alina jerked her head over to scowl at Marie, who was sitting with a girl who might have been called Nadia.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you eavesdropping is rude?" she snapped.

The effect was instant. The giggling stopped, and both Marie and Nadia fled the library without even picking up their things, rushing out apologies as they passed. Her scowl slipped back into a frown, but it was too late to apologise. She hadn't meant to make them run.

A snort drew her attention back to Zoya. "If they are going to be obnoxious, they could at least stand their ground about it."

"Like you?"

There was another of those pauses, and Alina felt herself being sized up and assessed before Zoya smirked. "Obviously. Everyone needs a goal."

Alina blinked, before a startled laugh escaped her. It was as much at the situation as at Zoya's words - the other girl had clearly been trying to gauge whether or not she could get away with making a joke. She tried to imagine Mal seeking permission for something like that, or even Genya, and her laughter died in her throat.

"Come with me," she said abruptly, scooping up her books and notes.

Zoya's jaw tightened, and Alina felt a little thrill go through her; this was not a girl who followed anyone's orders.

But Alina wasn't just anyone. So Zoya stood, gathering her own things in a much less haphazard fashion and raising an eyebrow at the younger girl.

"I want to study in my rooms." Emboldened by Zoya's reaction, Alina didn't bother to ask if she wanted to or not. "It's more private that way."

Deciding to see how dare she could push it, she turned on her heel and headed for the doors, not looking behind her. The click of boots behind her pushed a satisfied smile to her face.

"The hour is almost up," Zoya noted, a little too casually, as she carefully edged herself closer and closer to walking alongside her. Alina, who absolutely could not care less where the other girl walked so long as she was going in the same direction, did nothing to stop her.

The hour _was_ almost up. Whatever lessons Genya was doing that she didn't like to talk about, she'd be done with them soon, and free to-

What, exactly? Be awkward around Alina? It was strange and awful feeling, the young girl decided, having a friend that didn't want to be your friend anymore. Everyone else had either been taken from her, or never wanted to be her friend in the first place. This was new, and she hated it.

"Good," she announced, and pretended not to notice Zoya's own satisfied smile.

**iii.**

"Bah." Baghra spat into her fire. "You aren't even trying anymore."

"I am _too_." Alina set her hands on her hips and glared. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead, but a steady glow continued to fill the room. "You hit me, and I held the light. That's focus."

Her chest rose and fell with the exertion, but it was an exhilarating sort of exhaustion, like she'd just spent a day racing through the halls of the orphanage with Mal. She clung to the light, _her _light, and refused to let go.

"Your power is not a metaphor." The woman's eyes drilled into her. "It is not a safety net, or a precious toy to keep you safe at night. You aren't _diminishing_ yourself by making it smaller."

But Alina shook her head. A sick feeling curled through her gut, up her throat at the thought of what Baghra wanted her to do. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut against her teacher's irritated expression, but the old woman was scarier in the dark. It was all she could do to refuse her, right now.

"If you think I respect you more because you think you can refuse me, you could not be more wrong." Baghra's voice dripped contempt. "Get out. Don't come back until you're ready to see sense."

**iv.**

"Surely you can at least tell me if she's inside?"

"Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Shouldn't you be at the Grand Palace, anyway?"

"_No!_"

"Genya?" Alina hurried around the corner to find her friend drawing herself up to her full height and looking like she was about to throw herself at the _oprichniki _ guarding the doors to her room. It was Erik who had been speaking - the woman next to him looked like she was about to reach for a knife.

Genya whirled on her, and for a moment Alina thought she was going to start yelling. Instinctively, she felt her body closing in on itself, like she could will herself smaller. She had half shrunk back behind the corner, before her memory caught up with her.

_Solnyshko_. The word no longer brought to mind her nightmares, but instead that calm, steady gaze, the Darkling's firm belief in her and her power. It took Alina a second, but she forced herself to straighten, tucking her hands neatly behind her back as she approached Genya.

"I thought you didn't want to come here?" She did her best to keep the accusing tone out of her voice, but probably didn't succeed.

"I thought you invited me here because I was your friend." The colour was high in Genya's cheeks, although Alina caught the waver of confusion in her voice and knew the other girl had caught her lapse.

"I did?" _When I thought you were my friend_.

Something that looked suspiciously like hurt flickered across Genya's face, and too late Alina realised it sounded like she didn't remember the invitation.

"Right." The other girl's cheeks flushed deeper, but the her chin came sharply up, and she carefully tugged on her clothes, straightening the white material. "Then I will be going. Have a good day, Alina. Enjoy Zoya's company."

"_That's_ what this is about?" Alina grabbed Genya's arm as she went to brushed past her, and couldn't avoid missing the way the _oprichniki_ nearby both reached for their weapons. Maybe Genya noticed too, or maybe Alina wasn't giving her enough credit; either way, she stilled, and didn't pull away.

"Of course that's what this is about! Everyone thinks she's your favourite now, and they aren't afraid to-"

Despite her bewilderment, sudden worry lanced through Alina. She tightened her grip.

"Afraid to what?" she demanded. "Genya, did something happen?"

"Nothing you would care about."

"Nothing-?" Now Alina could feel the blood rising in her own cheeks. Her free hand balled into a fist. "You know what, you don't get to say things like that to me. Not when you're the one who started behaving strangely. Not when you're the one who started _leaving_."

She meant to sound imperious, but instead, all of her hurt and her fear and her confusion stuffed itself into that single word and then exploded out again. Alina watched it smack right into Genya, the almost physical force of it making the other girl's lips part in surprise.

For a moment, the two young girls just stared at each other. Alina, looking for some kind of explanation, and Genya like she'd just found one.

"I'm sorry," Genya said finally. The strangest part was, she sounded like she meant it. "But he gave you rooms near to his. His _oprichniki_ guard you. That's not just being his favourite, that's - it's something else completely. Something far more important. And I told you you _smelled_."

That didn't make _any_ kind of sense, and Alina was about to mention that when she felt Genya's arm shifting under her grip.

"Please let me go." Impossibly long lashes swept down over cheeks that were pale now, the crimson having fled to wherever Genya's anger had gone.

Alina let go.

**v.**

She didn't return to her room, although Erik looked like he might start towards her. There was just something about it that she didn't want to return to, or at least not at that moment.

Instead she left the Little Palace entirely, striding out onto the grounds. A movement nearby had her jerking her head around, wondering to what extent the _oprichniki_ were guarding her exactly.

Wondering how she'd gone from being too unimportant to have real friends, to the complete opposite.

But if there were any _oprichniki_ there, they moved too fast for Alina to be able to spot them. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled out over the grounds, at the perfectly manicured beauty there. They might have been beautiful to look at, but they didn't provide any sort of comfort. Her fellow students would be useless for that, and the Darkling was out at the border again.

Alina considered, briefly, going to see Baghra. The woman wasn't anyone's idea of warm, but there was comfort in consistency. Even just being snapped at for failing, being treated like any other wayward student, would be better than being left alone with her own thoughts right now.

She had already pushed her way past the first few trees when she remembered the last thing Baghra had said to her. _Don't come back until you're ready to see sense_.

Alina wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and squeezed her eyes shut against the frisson of fear that shot through her. She'd been trying to _ignore_ that situation, using the extra time to study with Zoya, implying that she had that time because she was excelling in her lessons, not failing them.

Sooner or later, she was going to have to deal with the Baghra problem. Later, actually. With Genya's lowered gaze haunting her thoughts, there was just no way she was going to be able to face the strange old woman as well.

_Something far more important_.

"Here I was told you were avoiding lessons."

Alina's eyes opened so fast, she nearly lost her footing from the sudden assault of light and colour on her senses. A gentle hand reached out to steady her shoulder, and she found herself staring up at the familiar form of the Darkling.

"You're supposed to be at the border!" she accused, tugging at his sleeve like that would somehow confirm his presence where his hand had not. Except that his hand _had_, that familiar rush of certainty sweeping through her small form.

"Am I?" He raised one dark eyebrow at her. "I must have forgotten handing control of the Second Army and its movements over to you, _solnyshko_. I apologise."

She flushed, shrugging herself out from under the weight of his hand, even though she didn't really want to. "You letter said not to expect you."

"I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Her mouth opened to deny that she would have, only to shut with a click. There was a lie she couldn't tell. It was stupid, she barely knew anything about the man, but there was a part of Alina that only felt at home in her own skin when she was around the Darkling.

She had a sneaking suspicion that it was because, whatever his long term expectations of her, right _now_ he seemed content to let her do as she willed, when everyone else seemed to want something of her.

The Darkling's mouth curved up at her reaction, and she couldn't help but smile back at him in response. He liked that she had been waiting for him to come back.

"Walk with me," he instructed, nodding his head back towards the Little Palace. "And tell me why it is you have stopped going to your lessons with Baghra."

"She told me to stop coming!" She fell into step with him, although she had to run every second step to keep up.

"Are you sure those were her exact words?"

Alina hesitated. The temptation to say _yes_ and lay all the blame on her teacher was strong, but she had a sneaking suspicion that the Darkling had actually been in the forest to talk to Baghra, and probably knew exactly what was going on. She blew out her cheeks, crossing her arms over her chest.

The Darkling chuckled. "I thought not."

**vi.**

It came out in fits and starts, mumbles and hand gestures and the occasional _it's not fair_ as the Darkling led her to her rooms. Erik and the other guard immediately sprang to attention, and both Grisha ignored them as they stepped over the threshold.

"I can't _do_ what she wants," Alina said finally, throwing herself onto her couch. Her small body sank like a stone into its embrace as the Darkling pulled up a chair before her. "Making the light is fine. Holding it there is fine too. Making the light and then making it _smaller_ - I can't do that. It only wants to grow. It doesn't want to go away."

He leaned in, elbows resting on his knees. Alina hadn't realised there were so many ways to think of the word grey until she met this man and saw his eyes, currently the same shade and sharpness as steel.

But not, she knew, trying to cut her. More like he was slicing away the extra words, the padding she gave her description of the problem so that she could actually talk about it. Her power didn't have a mind of its own, after all. The only mind it has was hers.

"You're concerned about losing your ability."

Alina froze before she could tell her body not to, and then shook her head fiercely. "No. _No_. That'd be stupid. I've been paying attention to my other lessons, and Zoya's been helping me. I know you can't just _lose_ it. People can use the Small Science, or they can't. I can, and that's that."

"It is that," he agreed after a moment. "But you very nearly managed something similar to losing it, in your old life. Klara told me that she almost passed you over."

Alina thought of Mal. Of screaming for him, of him promising he would find her. And she thought of the warm glow of her power, the bright sunlight that fill Baghra's hut and any other place whenever she wanted.

She thought of the Darkling, and his quiet faith in her. _Solnyshko. Ravka's saviour._

"I…didn't want to leave," she admitted softly. "There was someone important to me there. I didn't want to be separated from him, so I pushed the light down. I almost made it disappear."

The steel in that gaze kept carving away. "And now?"

Alina sucked in a shuddering breath, wriggling further into the couch like its softness would somehow protect her. From what, she wasn't sure.

"I know I had to come here. And that it's better this way. And there are lots of parts I like." She looked down at her hands. They had filled in since she had arrived in Os Alta, the fingers no longer so pale and spindly. She thought of Genya again, the sparkle in her golden gaze before she had thought it necessary to lower it. Of Zoya, following her to this very room. Her _oprichniki. _Cake. And The Darkling himself. "But if I focus too hard, if I make my power too small, it might not come back. And all of those things would be gone."

She knew, of course. How could she not? No matter what part of her aura of power people responded to - her summoning, her black clothes, the rooms in the Little Palace - none of it actually had anything to do with Alina herself. A beat passed, two, before she forced herself to meet the Darkling's gaze and hold it. Almost a challenge, like she was daring him to tell her that he would still care for her if she couldn't hold the sun in her palms.

He didn't look away.

Instead, he reached out and took her hands in his. His touch was cool, but not uncomfortably so. More like the touch of gentle fingers checking for a temperature.

"I want you to do it again," he said softly.

Aline stared. "What?"

His own gaze was unrelenting. "I lead the Second Army. Ravka's best interests are my best interests, and your existence is in Ravka's best interests. If you can't trust that I won't hurt you because I care for you, trust in that. And do it again."

It wasn't just his eyes. His voice was magnetic; even if he hadn't been holding her hands, she thought that she still would have felt that rush, that pull towards him.

Alina wanted to believe him. Genya had turned away from her, Zoya never really cared, Baghra was just a terrifying teacher doing her job. She wanted to believe that at least one person in this place cared about her, that she hadn't given up Mal for nothing.

So she forgot all about Ravka, and trusted instead.

Ruthlessly, Alina imagined grasping that indeterminable _thing_ inside of her, and thrusting it down. Stamping on it, until it couldn't rise again. The warmth drained from her fingers first, leeching away like water swirling down a drain. A murmured sound escaped her, something like a mumbled _no_, but that steel gaze bored into her, urging her onwards. She wasn't even sure what she was _doing_ anymore, only that she had to keep going.

Only that she couldn't let him down.

And then it was over. And Alina felt empty.

"Wh-" Her lips parted on the sound, but she couldn't tell if she wanted to say _what_, or _why_. _What did I just do? Why did you make me?_

But he hadn't made her do anything. She'd decided all on her own, even if she wasn't entirely sure _why_.

One hand brushed over her forehead, pushing her fringe back as though he really were checking her temperature. There was nothing but kindness in that grey eyed gaze now, so much so that Alina was sure she must have imagined the urging that had been there before, the implacability.

"_Solnyshko_," he murmured softly, and a call rang through her.

But nothing responded. The faint edges of panic sunk their teeth into her and began ripping their way inwards, consuming her. _Nothing there?_ Alina's panicked mind repeated the words over and over. _Nothing there. There's nothing there, nothing there, oh saints, what have I _done?

Something cold pressed against her forearm, and her mind's desperate ramble was broken off by a yelp of pain. "You're making things worse!" Alina yelled, as the call rang through her again, and this time that thing inside _awoke_.

Energy and warmth surged back through her nerves and didn't stop there, yellow, buttery light spilling over her fingertips, dancing across their conjoined hands. The Darkling called a third time, drawing her power out of her like - like something she'd never felt before. She didn't have a proper comparison.

It was still the middle of the day as her power shot across the room. But there was something different about _her_ light - purer, warmer against the chill that still lingered even this far into spring. For once, Alina didn't laugh, or even smile as her light was released into the world. She simply sagged back into the couch and sighed. Relieved.

"No matter what happens, I will always be able to call your power out of you again," the Darkling told her.

Slowly, he released her hands, and the light drew itself back under her skin. But that was where it stayed, suffusing her with new energy, an irrepressible sort of _life._ Alina sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes happily, and then lashed out with one of her feet.

She caught the Darkling in the knee.

"You're a big _jerk!_" she cried, struggling to rise from the sofa, which had nearly swallowed her hole. "I thought I was broken!"

He was laughing! He really was a jerk. "I'm sorry for that, _solnyshko_. But weren't those few seconds of fear worth what you have learnt?"

The worst part was, she couldn't argue with him about that. It had been disorienting, awful, and she never ever wanted to do it again. But there was no escaping her power. And there was no losing it, either.

A stinging pain and a trickle of wetness drew her attention to her arm, and the line of blood slowly weeping down to her wrist. "You cut me," she accused, instead of admitting that he was right.

"I did. It's superficial, but I can send for a Healer if you wish." At her head shake, he continued. "You didn't trust me quite enough. In your panic, you were suppressing your power even more. I had to distract you."

"...I'm sorry."

He shrugged, spreading his hands. The knife he had used was nowhere to be seen. "I understand that I am still much a stranger to you. Full trust will come in time. But I hope this has helped, just a little."

It seemed like a strange thing to say, given that he'd just cut her arm open, and all. But Alina only hesitated for a moment, before giving him a slow nod.

"Just a little."

**interlude.**

The boy cried out.

Around him, other boys stirred from their sleep. A pillow sailed in his direction, missed by a mile. But the boy fell anyway, tangled in his bedsheets. A _thud_ echoed throughout the dormitory, followed by a few snickers.

"What's all this noise?" Ana Kuya stood silhouetted in the doorway, but she already knew the answer. The light of her lantern lifted, casting itself across the face of the boy.

He relaxed visibly, his struggles to free himself slowing, until he could get a hand free to extricate the rest of his body. "Sorry," he mumbled, trying to hide his face.

Ana Kuya tutted, but there was something strangely gentle in the sound, as she gripped the boy's arm and helped him back into the bed. "There is nothing in the dark that will get you, Malyen Oretsev."

The boy stared at the lantern, like he could imprint its light onto his eyeballs, and keep it there forever.

"That's because it already took Alina."


	6. Chapter 6

_So this chapter took a little longer than expected! Sorry about that - I both got stuck with what I wanted to do with it, and had a bit of job upheaval going on at the same time. So for everyone who's sticking with the story, thank you! I'll try to get the update up a little faster next time, although I can't make promises. While I definitely appreciate the enthusiasm for this fic, please understand that I update this story at my own pace.  
_

_Also, to the person who wanted to know about what the ships were! You didn't have PMs turned on, so I will answered here - this fic is going to be both Darklina and Malina, although you'll have to wait and see to find out under what circumstances._

* * *

**i.**

If she was expecting a welcome back from Baghra - well. Alina knew better than to expect a welcome from Baghra.

"What are you waiting for? Get inside already!"

Alina grinned, abandoning her position of hovering nervously in the doorway to hurry inside. "You missed me," she declared boldly.

"Why would I miss a ridiculous child who can't even follow basic instructions?"

"Because one day I won't be getting instructions," she pointed out. "I'll be giving them."

"Hrmph."

But she didn't say anything further before launching into the lesson. And Alina was learning that with Baghra, silence might as well have been akin to praise.

**ii.**

The new confidence the Darkling's experiment had instilled in her was something to luxuriate in. Alina didn't focus on it too much, but that was because she didn't have to. Assured that her power wouldn't simply disappear on her, she became a brighter child, more willing to engage Marie's chatter and encourage Sergei's arrogance.

There wasn't much time for self reflection in the face of simple happiness.

Zoya hated it, of course, which only made Alina that much happier. She might have respected the older girl, for her knowledge and her power, but she knew she couldn't trust her. And that made her hard to like, even as Alina made sure to keep her in her inner circle of companions.

Ivan was another student she collected into her retinue. Sergei was going to be a Heartrender, but Ivan basically already was. The whole concept unsettled Alina, but she wasn't stupid; the Corporalki were the most powerful of all the Grisha orders. Befriending one was good. Befriending two was better.

Plus. Sergei wouldn't stop talking about how good he was. Alina was sure that was true, but she preferred being around Ivan. The older boy didn't bother to brag. It wasn't exactly modesty - judging by the nervous way people looked at him, it was because he just didn't need to.

It can't have been his dream to spend time with an eight year old, but the fact that he didn't act like it was made Alina inclined to appreciate him. The fake friendliness got really grating after a while.

"Have you started physical training yet?" he asked abruptly one day.

Alina screwed up her face. It wasn't that she was _bad_ at the physical training - a few months at the Little Palace had cured her of whatever sickness had ailed her at Keramzin. But she wasn't good either, and the arrival of other new Grisha children who were also less than impressive didn't help soothe her ego.

Ivan snorted. "Not going well, huh?"

"It could be better."

"I'll train you."

Next to her, Genya stiffened. They hadn't exchanged more than pleasantries since their confrontation - Alina grumpily wanted the other girl to come to her first, and Genya was steadfastly refusing to do so. Still, Alina could remember more than one implication that her presence was somehow protecting Genya, and so had continued to at least eat meals with her.

"Um." Alina felt heat infusing her cheeks, even as she tries to ignore the other girl. Zoya was one thing, but Ivan was a _boy_, and nearly twice her age besides. "Is that allowed?"

"Don't see why not. You don't have to, but I'm the best in my class, and anyone older is too busy with their own studies. Corporalki know bodies better than anyone."

There wasn't a lot she could say in the face of that. Alina reached for the sugar bowl, turning the milk in her porridge into syrup. "Okay. I mean, I guess it can't hurt."

"Excuse me," Genya murmured, standing with her usual poise. Alina thought she'd gotten used to the situation between them, but that didn't stop her shoulders from slumping as she watched the other girl go.

"Why do you care so much?"

She blinked. Ivan was looking at her, quizzical and unconcerned.

"About Safin," he clarified. "She's not even Grisha, not really."

"She - what?" Alina twisted her head again, just in time to see Genya slip out of the dining hall. "Yes, she is. What do you mean? She's here, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but-" He shrugged. "Grisha don't wear white. It's a servant's colour. Whatever she is, she's not going to be one of us."

Alina scowled up at him. He might have been fourteen and a boy, but she was still the Darkling's favourite, and maybe Genya was being _weird_, but she was still Alina's friend. At least, she hoped so. "So we should just ignore people who aren't like us?"

"What?" His voice cracked a little, and he scowled as well, although he was careful not to direct it at her. "I didn't say that. Other people would, though."

He wasn't wrong. And Alina had never made the connection between white and servants colours before - all the people who attended her wore charcoal. But she had seen them, she remembered now. White and gold, usually from the Grand Palace. She didn't _know_ if that had any kind of connection to Genya, but that didn't matter. Other people obviously thought it did,

Alina tried to think about what it would be like, to be thought of as a servant, and then suddenly find out that the odd, homesick girl you had befriended was - well. The type of person who got rooms near the Darkling and was guarded by his personal _oprichniki._

_Something far more important_.

She stood, abandoning Ivan and her half eaten breakfast without a further word.

**iii.**

"Genya, wait!"

The older girl was headed towards the Little Palace. Alina watch her pace pick up for half a second, before she probably realised that that could be a bad idea.

It wasn't. Alina wasn't about to run to the Darkling and tell him that her friend was ignoring her (he'd probably just tell her she was above that, anyway. Ravka's saviour didn't need friends). But Genya didn't really know that.

Still, Alina also wasn't going to complain about something that allowed her to catch up to Genya. There was no way she would have been able to make it, otherwise - Genya had two years on her in the physical training department, as well as age.

"I have classes," the other girl protested lightly.

"Not for another hour. I remembered." Alina took a second or two to catch her breath. "Genya, are you scared of me?"

Genya stilled, and the look on her face said that she very much wanted to lie. That the lie would be _no. _Finally, she sighed, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. "Not of you personally."

"Is it because I'm the Darkling's favourite? Because - because you knew that the morning after we met! I basically shout it everywhere I go." She tugged at her _kefta_. "Anyway, he's not that bad. Intimidating, but he really just wants-"

"He's the second most powerful man in the country, Alina." Genya sounded tired. "He's amazing. Awe-inspiring. And he doesn't have friends."

"Yes, but I'm not him. And I _want_ to be friends with you. You're funny, and kind, and until a couple of weeks ago you didn't treat me like I could make or ruin your life with a snap of my fingers." She looked down at her feet, scuffing her boot in the dirt. The cloth of her _kefta_ abruptly felt too heavy, dragging her down. "It's…hard, Genya. No one really wants to be my friend. They just want to be in my good graces."

"Alina…" The sadness in Genya's voice was an ache, and it hit Alina right in the gut. "You _are_ like him. Not in personality, not at all, but in power? No one else has ever - _ever _- been given the privileges you have. And in Os Alta, it's power that matters. The reason people look at you like you can change their lives is because you can."

"Then why not be my friend?" Alina exploded. "If that's what I'm destined to be, why not try to stay close to me?"

It was Genya's turn to duck her head, elegant hands knotting gently behind her back. It took her a long time to respond again, like she had to pick each word carefully.

"Being close to people in power, being in their favour…it doesn't always mean good things happen to you. I don't want to be the best friend of the Darkling's favourite. It's too much pressure."

Alina blinked, and was horrified to find her lashes wet with tears. She didn't want to cry, didn't want to seem like some stupid child.

"Then why get mad about Zoya? And Ivan? If you don't want to be my friend, why be upset about me making new ones?"

"They aren't your friends," she snapped, and for a moment it felt like it had before. When Genya had let herself care about Alina. "And its because I don't want to be the best friend of the Darkling's favourite, but I still want to be Alina's, all right? You're nice, even if you get grumpy when you're hungry or tired, and have no idea how to do your hair. And you don't treat me like a - like-"

"A servant?"

Genya's pale cheeks flamed red, but she nodded. "You can say you won't treat me like that in the future, or that you won't expect favours for your kindness, but it's just as possible that you'll change your mind. You've already started changing, just a little bit. Testing how far your influence goes, I've _seen_ you."

"I'm an orphan," Alina blurted.

Genya blinked, taken aback. "What?"

"I'm - I'm an orphan," she repeated, slower this time, feeling her own cheeks flush with something that felt too much like shame. "I don't have parents. They died, and I was taken to Keramzin. The Duke who owned the manor made it into an orphanage. They gave me food, and a roof, and his birthday, and they made sure I knew exactly who I owed it to."

"Alina…"

"So I know, okay? I know what it's like to feel that way. And I wouldn't ever do it to anyone else. _Ever_."

She was only eight years old, her body small and slight, her voice half breath at the best of times. But she injected as much force into the words as she could, holding Genya's gaze, _willing _her to believe.

A few months ago, she wouldn't have done it. She would have let Genya go, retreated into herself - and Mal. She'd always had Mal to return to, before. Soon enough, it had gotten to the point when she hadn't tried to make any kind of connection outside of him.

But that had been in Keramzin. In the Little Palace, she needed more. She might have been young, but she'd have to be an idiot not to see that. And if she had to collect people like Zoya and Ivan, Sergei and Marie, she wanted to have people like Genya, too. People who actually cared about her, and not what she could do for them.

So she wasn't about to just let Genya go.

It must have shown in her expression, the way she held her body, the tone of her voice. All three at once, maybe. A flicker of anxiety raced across the older girl's face, maybe even anguish - but it passed soon enough, leaving Genya to shake her head with a weary sigh.

"You're like a dog with a bone, you know that?"

"Maybe. But you're not a bone, Genya. You're my friend. I _want_ you to be my friend."

"I want to be your friend too, Alina." Her voice was soft. "Do you promise that you won't say I owe you things? That you won't decide I have to prove how good of a friend I am to you?"

"I swear." Alina's reply was immediate, and intent. Seconds ticked by, Genya's perfect face unreadable.

And then she reached out, a gentle hand pushing Alina's fringe back. "Thank goodness. If I had to look at this mess for another week, I was going to attack you with a pair of scissors in the middle of the night. Come. There's still time before my first class, let me give you some style."

Alina wanted to wrinkle her nose at that, but there was already a grin in the way. Saying nothing, she acquiesced, following Genya back towards the student dormitories.

**iv.**

Alina had thought she understood light. It was brightness, a golden glow cupped in the palms of her hands (or wherever else she wanted it - Baghra was teaching her to create multiple spots of concentrated light). It was morning, warmth, an end to nightmares.

As spring melted away to a mild, gentle summer, Alina learnt something else. Light was a lack of weight. It was the ability to run across the grounds of the Little Palace and not get winded. It was finally showing Genya her rooms, teasing the _oprichniki_ with her, having her hair cut in a way the older girl deemed satisfactory. It was watching her test scores go up, _feeling_ herself getting smarter, stronger, developing an eagerness for knowledge and abilities she never would have dreamed could be in her reach.

It was packages of dolls and sweets, ornaments and books, little trinkets that made their way to her rooms from military camps all over Ravka. Good weather meant more fighting, which meant that the Darkling was away from Os Alta more and more. _That_ part wasn't light, but the fact that he remembered her was, the way each gift was picked out for her personally.

She still added bits and pieces to her drawer for Mal, but her expectations of actually ever seeing him again began to dwindle. There was light in that, too, although she couldn't deny that the thought made her ache when she least expected it. But Mal had been her saviour in her old life, someone she had needed desperately then.

The Alina of now didn't need a saviour. She definitely wasn't ready to _be_ one, but there were no big kids pushing her down in the halls anymore. She was the big kid, at least metaphorically.

Not that she was pushing anyone down. Why would she need to? She was light.

**v.**

She was heading back to her rooms from Baghra's hut when some of that lightness left her. The summer heat had an edge to it as it pierced mercilessly through the canopy of leaves overhead, and Alina was busy scowling up at it.

What was the point in being a Sun Summoner, if you couldn't summon the sun _away_ from you? There was such a thing as too much of a good thing, she huffed internally.

Caught up as she was in a battle of wills with the unfeeling ball of gas hovering in the sky above, she missed the choked sobbing at first. But she couldn't exactly make her way along the path with her eyes fixed on the heavens, and the rest of the world seemed to flood her senses once more when she finally pulled her gaze away. Birds chirped, the wind whistled through the trees, and someone was making quiet, strangled sounds that were all too familiar to Alina.

An orphan could easily recognise the sound of someone trying to hide their tears.

For a moment, she considered just walking on. Not out of any callousness, but because if someone had planted themselves near Baghra's hut and was _still_ trying to stifle their tears, they definitely weren't looking to be interrupted. On the other hand, if Alina didn't interrupt them, Baghra might. She wasn't entirely sure if Baghra ever actually left her hut, but now would be a pretty awful time for it to turn out she did.

Mind made up, Alina followed the crying into the trees. It wasn't until she nearly bumped into the other student that she realised who it was, and even then, it didn't make much sense.

"_Ivan?"_

The boy's reaction was instant; he shot to his feet, hands smearing over his face like that would somehow hide the evidence of his tears. The scowl he summoned was lacking in anything resembling fierceness, and that was from _Ivan_. Fierce scowls were his speciality!

"Alina?" His voice cracked on the second syllable, and the failed scowl slipped further into bewilderment. An ugly flush started to creep up his neck, clashing with the red of his _kefta_. "Everything's fine."

"I - I didn't ask," she stuttered, at a complete loss of what to say or do. How did one deal with crying boys? Mal had teared up occasionally, but all Alina had ever really had to do for him was be there. They took comfort in each other's presence.

Ivan was not really a taking comfort sort of boy.

"Oh." For a second, he really did seem fine. Other than the puffy eyes and tear tracks, that was. And then his face crumpled, back thumping against a tree trunk. Alina watched in horror as his hands came up, knuckling his eyes. Hands that had been teaching her how to defend herself, how to hurt other people, hands that now clutched at Ivan's face like he could somehow make the tears go back inside.

"I'm sorry!" Alina's own hands flapped, helpless. "Did you want me to ask? Because I can ask. Is everything okay, Ivan?"

A choked, wet laugh came from the boy. He turned his face into his shoulder, trying to wipe away the evidence again. He looked like he really needed to blow his nose, but Alina wasn't about to point that out.

"I got a letter from the First Army today," he informed his shoulder, voice thick with an unspecified emotion.

Alina felt her heart sink anyway. That emotion didn't need to be specified. There wasn't, after all, a whole lot of reasons for a Grisha-in-training to be getting letters from the First Army.

Ivan kept talking to his shoulder. "It was a Shu Han raiding party. Father - my father's stationed at the border." Another sob wracked his body, silent this time. "He was. They were caught unprepared."

A sharp, sudden pain clawed its way up Alina's throat. It was so abruptly overwhelming, it took her a moment or two to recognise it as empathy.

Not that the towns on the northern border were ever unprepared. But Alina had been. And judging by the way trembles passed through Ivan's body at irregular moments, he had been unprepared, too.

As though you could ever prepare for something like that.

Without really thinking about it, Alina shifted forward. One of Ivan's hands had fallen to his side; she stretched out her own, and gently curled her fingers into it, knotting them with his. His head jerked towards her, mouth open and ready to shoot down whatever he thought she was going to say.

But she didn't say anything. There wasn't, she thought, anything that _could _be said. If there was, it wasn't anything that she'd be good at saying. Ivan seemed to understand that, or at least, his mouth slammed shut with a click of teeth, and he didn't let go of her hand. If anything, he clenched it tighter, as the tension slowly seeped out of his body, and he sank to the forest floor.

Still silent, Alina let herself drop to the ground next to him. Fresh tears spilled over his eyelids, coursing their way through furrows already gouged there by earlier grief, seeking the path of least resistance. He was quiet now, his breath coming in short, shuddering gasps, but coming nonetheless. He held nothing back, now.

Alina stayed with him, until fingers of night began to grasp at the sky, and the summer heat leached out of the air. And when that happened, she showed her power to the first person since the Darkling had taken her to Baghra.

It was harder at night. She had to bend all of her focus on making sure it happened just right, carefully extricating her hand from Ivan's. He stirred, looking at her in confusion. The faint edge of embarrassment started to crowd in on his expression, but then a soft glow was spilling out into the evening, casting light and warmth over the two of them. Despite herself, despite the terrible situation, Alina felt a tired smile lifting her lips.

"Wh-?" Ivan was staring at her like he'd seen a ghost. Except that might have been a small thread of wonder there, behind the tangled knot of every other emotion strangling him at that point. So not a ghost. Something more miraculous.

"This is why the Darkling singled me out," she told him. "I'm sorry I wasn't ready in time to help save your father, Ivan. But I promise - I _swear_ - that in his memory, I'm going to make sure it won't happen to anyone else."

In the hazy glow of her light, Ivan regained his ferocity. Not with a scowl, but with a sharp, humourless smile.

**vi.**

It all came out to Genya the next day of course, although Alina did her best to keep the more personal details out of it, for Ivan's sake. Mostly, she wanted to make sure that she was the one to tell her friend, before any kind of rumours started to fly around.

None did, though. Either Ivan was too tired or grief-stricken to be gossiping, or he had recognised that Alina wanted to tell others about what she could do in her own time.

Either way, Genya watched with gob-smacked surprise as Alina made the light dance for her, bending all of her energy into making it as pretty as possible, even with the constraints of full daylight hindering the visibility.

"No _wonder_ you're his favourite," she said wonderingly. "It's the Shadowfold, isn't it? He wants you to help him destroy it."

"_I_ want to help him destroy it," Alina corrected. "I wanted to keep it to myself, what I can do, because I wasn't sure that I could. I didn't want people looking at me with even more pressure, you know? But seeing Ivan yesterday, I don't think I really have a choice. I _have_ to help Ravka. Otherwise things like this are going to keep happening."

Genya's eyebrows twitched together slightly. She didn't look awed anymore, or even that impressed by Alina's speech, like Alina had kind of hoped she would be. No, instead, she looked concerned.

"Does the Darkling know you feel that way? That you want to show people?"

The Darkling, from his last missive to Alina, was on his way back from his visit to Kribirsk. Some few days away, but close enough that sending another letter would be pointless. Alina shook her head. "Not really. But he said it was up to me. My choice."

"What people say and what they mean aren't always the same thing." Genya sounded wise beyond her years. "Especially with the Darkling. I think you should wait."

"I don't need to ask permission to use my own powers," Alina said grumpily, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Don't make that face, you look ridiculous," Genya instructed. "And I'm not saying you have to ask him. Just...inform him. If nothing else, he certainly knows how to put on a show. Maybe he can give you some advice on what to do."

Alina got the distinct impression that she was being Handled. Still, she couldn't deny the sense in what Genya was saying. Alina could still remember that stranger staring out at her from behind the Darkling's grey gaze.

She had no wish to make him reappear.


	7. Chapter 7

**i.**

The king was angry.

It was nothing conveyed to Alina directly, but she was almost nine now, and not stupid. Months in the Little Palace had taught her how to read situations, and the whispers of servants, the way some of her fellow students drew back from her (even after her revelation), said that the king was angry.

Some part of Alina was probably supposed to care. She knew that she would have, once upon a time. But the awed faces of her fellow students when she had sent ribbons of light dancing out across the lake, they ate away any concerns that might have settled in her stomach.

Well. That, and the Darkling's reassurances that everything would be fine. She had double checked, when she told him about what she wanted to do, that it was okay to let people know about her power. He had repeated the same thing he had said the last time they'd spoken - that her power was hers to with what she wanted.

A strange expression had stolen over his features, too. Something that was so alien in Alina's experience, and so alien on his face especially, that it hadn't been until later that evening that she'd realised what it was.

He was touched. Touched, that she'd thought to double check with him, and to ask his opinion on how he thought she should do it. Alina had smiled to herself that night, and then carried out his suggestions to the very letter the next evening. Genya, too, had received an uncharacteristic hug from her, in thanks for her advice.

Some of the actual Grisha would practice - or show off - their abilities every evening. The students were allowed to watch, and that afternoon Alina had casually suggested to her retinue that they should take advantage of that. A couple of people - Zoya especially - had given her a suspicious look, probably because Alina didn't make suggestions that encouraged people spending even _more_ time with her very often.

But Alina had brushed that off with ease. It would be obvious enough that she had planned the whole thing once she got started, after all.

It hadn't mattered. Choosing a lull between Grisha displays, Alina had stood on the edge of the lake and drawn on all of the residual heat and light remaining in the air, just before the sun slipped away. It had been a small thing at first, barely noticeable, fed by her nervousness as much as her power. But a dark figure on the edge of the forest had caught her eye, and determination to succeed ate up that tremulous thing.

She wouldn't fail in front of the Darkling.

And she hadn't. The warmth had suffused her skin, her flesh, all the way down into her bones before she had let it ricochet out across the water. The gasps had been deafening, the silence that followed even more so, and once she was done, not even the Grisha had dared to try and follow up her display.

"You are a _Sun Summoner?_" It was Zoya who broke the silence. Of course it was. Alina had opened her mouth, but it was Genya who responded, her voice smooth as silk .

"Didn't you know?" There was no hiding her smugness, and Alina had coughed into her hand to hide a laugh as Zoya's beautiful face flushed bright red. Not with embarrassment, of course, but anger.

Alina was going to have to smooth that over, later. But it was worth it, allowing Genya to have a small moment of her own.

So. The kind was mad? Let him be. After all, what could he do to her? She was the Sun Summoner, and Ravka needed her.

**ii.**

"He wants to meet you."

The Darkling's calm expression gave nothing away, but that was soothing in and of itself. He wasn't a statue, after all - he could be worried, or frustrated, just like any other man. Alina felt that she was starting to get a handle on the shifting of his features, figuring out what meant want.

So. Calm didn't necessarily mean good, but it didn't have to mean bad, either. Alina followed his cue, swinging her legs back and forth a little idly as she perched on a chair in her receiving room. He was perpendicular to her, absently stirring some more sugar into the hot chocolate she had asked for when he had shown up.

"All right," Alina said simply, hissing a little as she sipped her own drink too fast, and burnt her tongue. Spotting the corner of the Darkling's mouth quirk up, she sunk in her chair so she could reach his shin with her foot. It was less of a kick and more of a nudge, though, and it took her another undignified moment or three to wriggle her way back up into a proper sitting position.

He didn't say anything, but he held her gaze long enough to let her know that he didn't _have_ to say anything. He was laughing at her internally, she just knew it. Scowling down at her hot chocolate, she blew on it, waiting for him to respond.

"You aren't frightened?"

That startled the scowl right out of her. She blinked up at him. "No? You said you would protect me."

There was a pause, and this time he did laugh, the warm sound drifting over her gently. "You don't need protecting from the king, Alina. He needs you too badly." He paused, and something flickered behind those grey eyes, a sudden coldness. Not directed at her, though. Alina had the feeling that the Darkling did his best to hide that side of himself from her. "But he might forget, in the future. If he does, I will remind him."

She smiled at him, and this time when she slid down in her seat, it was to nudge him gently with her toe. "Thanks."

Again, the way the Darkling spoke seemed to imply that she should at least be nervous. Or maybe awed, at his declaration.

Mostly, Alina felt happy, in a way she'd only touched upon with Mal in Keramzin. There, she'd only had him. Here in the Little Palace, she was surrounded by people, some of whom were willing to face down the king for her, if necessary.

The Darkling regarded her, face still unreadable. His knee had jerked back, though, returning her nudge. "I am glad I found you, _solnyshko._"

Alina felt herself flushing bright red, but her smile didn't drop away. She ducked her head. "Me too."

There was silence for a moment, before Alina decided to take a chance and ask something that had been niggling at her ever since she had realised how mad the king was.

"Why didn't you tell him?"

He paused so long that Alina was about to clarify, when he finally responded.

"He didn't ask."

There was a strange, glittering look in those gray eyes. Alina decided to follow the king's example, and not press the matter further..

**iii.**

There was a party the day of her birthday, but it wasn't for her. The duke of Keramzin was in Os Alta as some of the troops rolled back along with autumn, and the king insisted on celebrating.

The Darkling didn't say it, but Alina could tell that something about the situation irritated him. After carefully pestering her _oprichniki_ for a few days, she gathered that he required the king's attention for some military matter.

The king was ignoring him.

She thought about that, about what the Darkling had said back in the late summer. _He didn't ask_. It probably wasn't her place to question _either_ men, but the whole thing seemed just a little bit…petty. It didn't make her think any less about the Darkling, though. Having met the king, she thought if she had to deal with him to the extent that her mentor did, she'd probably get petty as well. The meeting had been so very unimpressive, she barely recalled the details, except for his chin.

In the end, he left the capitol before the party, and Alina pretended like she wasn't disappointed. He was the only person who had reason to know when she celebrated her birthday, after all. She wasn't about to let anyone else know, and risk them putting two and two together. Whether or not it was common knowledge that the duke gave the orphans in his house his birthday, Alina wasn't sure, and didn't want to find out.

She was creating a new identity for herself, slowly uncovering it and carving it out. _Orphan _wasn't a part of that.

Still. She asked for cake when she got back from classes, and whispered a soft _happy birthday_ to Mal as she ate it. It was only when she was done that she noticed the package.

She was just picking at the strings when one of her _oprichniki _knocked on the door.

"Genya Safin to see you, miss."

"Let her in!"

The paper fell away, revealing gold embroidered black, and if Alina didn't know what the package was yet, she at least knew who it was from. Carefully, she unfolded the fabric, appreciation overriding eagerness. It was silk; the pure _decadence_ of using that for wrapping a present had Alina taking her time, savouring the moment.

"_Saints_." Genya's melodic voice caught in her throat as the door pushed shut behind her. "This had better be a special occasion, because if he gives you things like that for fun, I'm going to tear out your hair in a jealous rage."

Alina looked up, startled. Her friend sounded surprisingly sincere.

"It's my birthday," she said without thinking, letting the golden chain of a necklace slip over her fingers. Not that there was any harm in telling Genya - her friend already knew, after all. "Or at least, it's the one they gave me."

"Really?" Genya's lips parted. For a moment, it seemed she was at a loss for words, although whether that was because of what Alina had said, or because of the necklace in her hands, it was hard to say. "...Happy Birthday, Alina."

She smiled, not taking her eyes off her gift. "Thanks."

Holding up her hand, she let the pendant drop into a stray sunbeam between them. A low cry of delight broke past her lips as the colour shifted to a brilliant, blue-green, sending light bouncing around the room in a thousand broken shards. Pulling it out of the sun, the colour dulled slightly, although it was still beautiful. There seemed to be other shades within its facets, twisting the stone into a living thing as she turned it this way and that.

"May I see?" There was a note like longing in Genya's voice, and for a second, Alina wanted to refuse, wanted to tuck the necklace away for her eyes only.

But that would defeat the purpose of jewellery, which was, after all, to be worn. Besides, Genya was her friend. It didn't hurt anything to let her look, so after a faintly awkward beat, Alina held out her hand, letting the necklace pool into Genya's palm.

"Alexandrite," the older girl declared, holding it in the sun again. "High quality, too. It's probably worth more than everything in this room put together. Maybe your bedroom as well. The cut is called a cushion cut." She eyed Alina for a moment. "Summon at it, as bright as you can."

Alina's eyebrows had crawled up her forehead, but she bit back her question at the chance to show off. It took barely a twitch of her fingers to summon a beam of concentrated light, the thing she'd had so much trouble with only scant months ago, and the gemstone stole another gasp from her as the light hit it, and the colour shifted again, this time to a deep, purplish-red.

"The _very_ highest quality," Genya emphasised quietly. She tried to hide it, but there was a wistful moment of hesitation before she passed the necklace back to Alina. "It's a Ravkan jewel, you know. It was named after a king, years and years ago."

"Of course I knew." Alina rolled her eyes. "I was just reading about it in between studying, and getting beaten up by Botkin, and given worse by Baghra. Since when did you know so much about gemstones?"

She didn't _mean_ to hit a nerve - how could something like that hit a nerve? But something like caution flickered over Genya's beautiful face, turning it dark.

And then she sighed. "Oh, everyone already has some sort of idea of what I can do anyway. It's only you, who refuses to gossip, that doesn't have some idea. Knowing gemstones is a part of what I study. Not that I'd ever have reason to use Alexandrite, I don't think, but I still need to know what it is."

That made close to no sense at all, and Alina was pretty sure it showed. "What?"

Genya's expression set, turning determined. "Come here," she demanded. "I'm going to give you a birthday present, although it won't be anywhere near as impressive as it should be, seeing as you were so _rude_ as to not give me warning."

"I didn't want people to…" Alina trailed off, trusting her friend to understand, even as she did as instructed. She was both a fan of presents, and of finding things out. Genya's powers had niggled at her for almost as long as she had known the other girl.

"_I_ don't count."

"I guess that's true."

A smile broke briefly past the other girl's mouth, before an intense focus wiped it away. She took Alina's face in her hands, staring at her for so long, Alina began to shift uncomfortably. She might have gotten used to being looked at, but not like _that._

Her face felt strange. She'd had occasion to be healed once or twice since her arrival at the Little Palace, and it felt a little like that. Prickly, but not uncomfortable. It occurred to Alina that the Darkling would probably disapprove of her letting another Grisha, even a friend, near her face with unknown powers, but this was Genya. Like she'd said, she didn't count.

"There," her friend murmured, after a long moment had past. "Where's a mirror? You need to see this for yourself."

"A...mirror?" But a few stray thoughts were starting to coalesce in her mind, distant lessons dragging themselves to the forefront. She held onto them as she went into her room, where a full length mirror stood in the corner.

It only took a look to understand. In the time Alina had been in the Little Palace, she had shucked off her sickly, Keramzin appearance like a second skin. But that didn't mean she didn't still bear remnants, dark circles all too likely to return unless she got the exact right amount of sleep, her hair occasionally lank, skintone slightly uneven unless she had just come from practice in Baghra's hut. Her eyes weren't as rich a brown as they could have been, and while she'd put on weight, _bony_ was still a word that could be applied to her, all awkward angles.

Seeing herself in the mirror in that moment, most of that fell away. Obviously Genya hadn't changed her bone structure, but she looked as though she had just spend the whole day summoning, yet had somehow remained fully rested while she did it.

"You're still pale," Genya said apologetically from behind her. "I could give your cheeks more a glow, if I had my kit with me. And it doesn't last that long yet, just half a day or so. I _will_ get stronger."

"You're a Tailor," Alina breathed, ignoring her friend's rambles, whirling around to face her. Pride and defiance mingled in Genya's face, with something that Alina couldn't quite place.

"_Obviously_."

"But that doesn't make sense at all! You'd still be able to wear red, wouldn't you? Or - or at least purple."

Alina wasn't sure which order being a Tailor applied to, but it had to be one of them, didn't it? You didn't just stuff a Grisha in servants colours for having unusual abilities, that was for certain.

A high flush had risen in Genya's face, and Alina could see her struggling not to look away. "It's complicated."

"Explain it to me!"

But a waterfall of red hair tumbled over Genya's shoulders as the other girl shook her head. "One day. I can promise you that." One of her bright, kind smiles perked her whole face up then, so bright as to be obviously forced. "Come here again! You're clenching that necklace in your fist like you're afraid you're going to lose it between here and the door. You know the chain is for securing it in place, don't you?"

_Genya Safin_, Alina sighed internally, mind still racing (and going nowhere). _Queen of the subject change._

But, once again, she did as she was told, letting the older girl secure the clasp of her new necklace. The pendant thumped into the hollow of her throat, a greenish colour for the time being.

Alina glanced in the mirror again, trying not to look like she was admiring herself. She looked older, wearing that same mature before their time expression that some of the other students had.

"I'm going to change my birthday."

Genya sounded amused. "Is the Sun Summoner going to have a birthday every day, then?

"Don't be stupid!" Alina's fingers toyed with her new necklace. "Midsummer, though. The longest day of the year."

"You'll be ten before you ought to be."

"I'm already nine before or after I should be. Probably after. Ana Kuya just picked eight because I was so scrawny."

Genya laughed, the sound as beautiful as she was. "Whatever you say, Alina."

**iv.**

"Baghra, what is your power?"

Alina was glowing. Not literally for once, but that was a recent change. The woman had been pushing her harder lately, like she was searching for the edges of her power. It was mid evening, and after lighting up the entire dusky lake before them, Alina felt like they were starting to get there.

She felt exuberant. Baghra didn't seem to agree, but Baghra probably didn't even know what exuberant meant.

"None of your business," the woman bit out. "Do it again, and make it wider."

Alina stared. "I can do it again,"she said finally. "But it's not getting wider. And of course it's my business! You don't see Durasts training Tidemakers, do you?"

"Oh, so the Sun Summoner thinks she knows better than her teacher now, does she?"

Alina flushed, but lifted her chin defiantly. "I'll ask the Darkling."

Baghra cackled. "Girl, if you think you're going to get an honest out of that boy, you're dumber than I gave you credit for."

"You don't give me any credit!"

Baghra said nothing, and Alina suddenly had cause to doubt her own words. The comment about the Darkling didn't bother her - the two didn't get on, as far as she could tell - but the idea that Baghra somehow credited her with _anything_ abruptly blossomed in her mind.

She found that she liked it.

"I'll find out," she announced, returning her attention to the lake. Her arms _ached_, but she lifted them anyway, drawing on the last dying rays of the sun.

"Then the day you find out is the day you deserve to know," Baghra groused.

Alina thought she might stop frowning, when she finally managed to follow the older woman's instructions. But as she let her arms drop, panting and flushed and ready to drop along with them, Baghra's frown only deepened.

**v.**

Alina suspected that finding Ivan this time wasn't really an accident. It wasn't like he presented his tear stained face to her, but their paths seldom crossed outside of training. He was fifteen now, and had maybe a year or so of training before he would be promoted to full Grisha, so while it was known that the Sun Summoner considered him a part of her core group, he was usually too busy to actually make that apparent.

He was also, Alina learned, mourning the death of an uncle. The one that had taken over looking after his family, upon the death of his father. Another raid, another victim of war.

"The _king's_ wars," Ivan said, more than a hint of bitterness to his tone, and Alina slapped a small hand over his mouth. She wouldn't have been able to reach, if not for the fact that they were both sitting down, backs against a shelf of musty old cooking texts. She'd found him in the library.

She might have been unimpressed with the king herself, but she didn't express that out loud around anyone except the Darkling. Even she knew that much. Grief, apparently, made people stupid.

"It's war," she reminded him, and there was a harshness to her voice that she didn't recognise. "It doesn't matter who it belongs to, that's what happens."

"What do you know?" he snapped back, as she drew her hand away. His tears, less dramatic and all consuming this time, had long since ceased. "You're the Sun Summoner. The Darkling's favourite. They probably have your family in Novokribirsk or something. Somewhere safe and prosperous."

The idea was so ludicrous that for a moment, Alina could only stare. Maybe Novokribirsk itself was safe, but you still had to travel through the Unsea to get to it. For a second she thought about snapping back, about telling him just how wrong he was in precise detail, but something reigned her in. Whether it was the old Alina's reticence, or the new Alina's knowledge that her past would only make her seem weak, she bit her tongue.

"You don't really know anything about me," she managed after a moment. There was no hiding her irritation, even if she'd managed to curb her words. "And I'm trying to make sure you don't say anything stupid while you're upset, so don't be an ass."

His lips parted for a moment, and Alina thought she was going to have to explain the issue to him. But he shut it again, gave her a sharp, unhappy nod. "You're right." A pause. "Sorry."

"It's fine."

They sat in silence as the afternoon bled into evening, into night. Alina felt her eyelids dipping lower and lower. She didn't have an official bedtime or anything, but whatever the time was, it was later than she usually stayed up.

"You should go," Ivan said finally, as her small body started to list sideways. "It's late."

"Go where?" Alina mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. She started pushing herself to her feet, but her body felt heavy, tired. Distantly, she thought she heard a sigh as a big hand wrapped around her upper arm. It tugged, pulling her to her feet with surprising care.

A throat clearing. "We will take her."

The voice sounded familiar, so the words didn't bother her too much. She let her head rest against the nearest person, which was still probably Ivan, eyes slipping shut again as he swore.

"How long have you been there?" His voice sounded harsh.

"We are her guards. Assume we are always there."

It was Erik, Alina decided, and tuned out the rest of the conversation. The world dipped and whirled a bit, and she was dimly aware that her feet had left the ground, a strong pair of arms holding her up.

Sleep came fast after that. She didn't remember returning to her rooms.

**vi.**

It was winter before the Darkling returned, activity on the borders settling down enough that his presence wasn't required to keep things contained. No one was stupid enough to invade Ravka in winter.

The season was dark, but the one snowball she managed to nail the Darkling with cemented it as Alina's favourite. Not just because the look on his face had been nothing short of comical, but because he was _there_, for longer than a week or two at a time. She visited in the evenings, chattering away at him, hanging onto the words he chose to impart to her.

There was a lot of history. Grisha history, in particular. He elaborated on her lessons, gave her tidbits and personal observations that her teachers hadn't even hinted at. She could have shared them with her fellow students, of course, but instead she hoarded the nuggets of information, keeping them for herself. They didn't affect their schoolwork, after all, and like the necklace that sat in the hollow of her throat, this was something belonging to Alina alone.

"How old are you?" she asked him one such evening. He had been in the middle of saying something about the old king, and the implication in his words had been that he'd known the man. Alina knew that Grisha lived for a long time, but the Darkling didn't look that much more than a decade older than her.

He looked over at her, eyes unreadable. "Does it matter to you, _solnyshko_?"

Did it? Alina thought about that. It wasn't really about it _mattering_ so much as that she was curious. There was a quiet thought in the back of her mind that wondered how similar light and shadows were when it came to the question of lifespan. If she had only ticked away some infinitesimal part of her allotted time so far.

"You must be _really_ old," she said finally, grinning up at him.

It won her a chuckle, and he inclined his head. "One hundred and...something. Less than twenty, more than ten. Does that satisfy you?"

It took her breath away more than anything else, but she nodded, eyes wide, casting about for something to say. "...I think Genya would kill to have skin like yours when she's one hundred and something."

He laughed again, asked a few idle questions about her friendship with Genya before returning to his initial subject, and so the evening went on.

There was a fete, but the students were only allowed to participate in the very basic aspects of it. And so winter melted away, and the Darkling went with it. No one else in Ivan's family died. Genya took to practicing her Tailoring on Alina (it had taken some convincing on Alina's part, but they both ended up pleased with the results). Zoya remained the top of all her classes, but begged off tutoring Alina any longer once she started climbing the ranks in her own.

"I don't have the time," the older girl informed her. "Botkin asks me to assist with the younger students, and I have to focus on my own studies. I can only _hope_ you'll understand."

The word hope looked like it tasted sour in Zoya's mouth, and Alina was more than a little bit tempted to dash it. But while she may have been the Sun Summoner, Zoya was growing into...something else. Someone that people listened to, even if they didn't like. Alina was uncomfortably aware of the fact that people listened to her because they felt like they didn't have a choice. With Zoya, they did. They just chose not to exercise it, at least not until her back was turned.

"If you can't handle the load, of course I understand," Alina replied. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Genya's lips twitch up. Zoya's expression darkened, clearly caught in her own trap and unable to find a way to extricate herself.

"She's worried about you surpassing her," Genya said later, experimenting with the effects of amethyst in Alina's hair. "If you were just a mediocre student, she could reassure herself of her superiority, no matter what colours you wore. But now you're getting better at everything, she's getting worried."

"Ugh. She's welcome to them. I'm _so tired_ of black, Genya." Alina reached for her mirror, and had her hand likely smacked away.

"I'm not done yet," Genya said mildly. The white of her sleeve caught Alina's eye, and she bit her lip.

"Sorry."

"Shh. It's hard to focus when you're - ah. There. _Now_ you may look."

Eagerly, Alina reached for the mirror, admiring the shimmering purple streak in her hair. "That's amazing," she announced, before turning to her friend. "_You're_ amazing."

"I am, aren't I?" Genya touched a hand to her own auburn locks, before wrinkling her nose. "It's not for me, though."

"Well, we can't all be perfect already."

In the year or more since Alina had arrived at the Little Palace, Genya had only gotten more beautiful. She was twelve now, and even Alina could tell that she was _just_ on the cusp of - something else. Alina herself had grown into a pretty child, but it was nothing compared to Genya.

It seemed that, as the months passed, that old look most of the Grisha children wore only deepened in her friend's eyes. Like she was beginning to understand something she wished she didn't. Alina thought about asking sometimes, but the words always died in her throat.

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know.

**vii.**

Purple streaks abounded in people's hair throughout spring, although Alina had no idea how people managed it without Genya's help. They were never as good, of course, always a little too bright, a little too garish. The fashion even transitioned its way over to the Grand Palace, and rumours raced back about women - and a few men - turning their whole heads colours of the rainbow.

That, Alina thought, was a little excessive. In contrast, she noted that Zoya's hair remained its disgustingly luxurious dark self during the entire experiment.

Her training continued. Life had taken on a sort of rhythm that she delighted in. It was never _boring_, even if she occasionally did the same thing twice in a row. The spectre of Keramzin, once a nightly visitor, shrank away until she sometimes wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. Even the hole in her heart where Mal had been felt more like a dark patch now than anything else - marring the surface, certainly, but not burrowing deep.

That may have been helped along by the Incident in summer. The approach of her new birthday - this one announced to all and sundry - had her thinking about her old one, and who she shared it with.

Guilty, it occurred to Alina that she had never written to Mal. So caught up in the sheer _missingness_ of him, the strangeness of the Little Palace, the confusion of her own life, she'd never even thought about it. Keramzin had been cut from her like an amputated limb, and the way the Darkling had put it, doing more than just thinking about it would only encourage infection.

It was Zoya leaving that gave Alina the idea. Grisha students leaving for any amount of time, even a short trip due to their extremely impressive record, was - well, not unheard of, but unusual enough to garner attention. People didn't flock away from Alina to the other girl, but they did start splitting their time a little more evenly.

A part of Alina knew that once, that wouldn't have bothered her. Now? It rankled, just a little bit. Now, she felt the urge to compete rising up in her chest. That, combined with the guilt over her failure to write to Mal, combined one summer evening when the Darkling had been called back to the Grand Palace.

She had maybe picked her moment badly. Summer meant the height of the campaigning season, after all, and the fact that the Darkling was even in Os Alta meant that the king was throwing his weight around, meant that the Darkling wouldn't be happy. Still, some kind of strain always seemed to ease from him when he was around her, or at least that's what Alina liked to think the slowly relaxing form of his shoulders said.

So she went for it, almost as soon as he was seated in her receiving room. "I want to go to Keramzin."

She knew she'd said the wrong thing the moment the words fell from her lips. It wasn't anything the Darkling said. He barely even moved - did the opposite, in fact, stilling completely in his chair. His eyes cut to her like a silver blade, and a chilling sense of deja vu slunk down Alina's spine.

This was the stranger. The Darkling that most people knew, the Darkling whispered about by peasants and warned about by other Grisha students when they thought she couldn't hear. The Darkling she had met only once or twice, and had hoped to never see again.

"What."

Alina felt her fingers curling into the arms of her chair. What had she done? It didn't seem like such a big deal to her - not a small deal, but nothing to provoke this sort of response. She swallowed, and didn't repeat herself. He knew what she had said; he was looking for an explanation.

"I never - wrote," she said lamely. "I told you there was someone there I cared about, and I just left. He promised he'd find me again, but I know that's not going to happen. The Little Palace isn't for him. But I'd like to see him, to explain - to say goodbye."

It sounded weak, even to her own ears. Why now, after all? She could have asked at any point to go, after all. The excuse that she had been afraid of putting Keramzin in danger didn't really hold - after all, nothing had changed now to make that not apply. Her vague idea had been that no one would have to know she was the Sun Summoner, which was a vague idea that could have come up at any moment.

Alina ducked her head, not needing any prompting from the Darkling to keep going. He waited, in silence, for her to continue. "And Zoya is allowed to make a visit. Other students have been, too. I just thought…"

And like that, the stranger turned away. Her Darkling returned, grey gaze softening, shoulders relaxing. "Jealousy is unattractive, _solnyshko_."

She flushed, but it wasn't just from embarrassment. "I'm not jealous!" A pause. "Not _only_. This is important to me. What's the big deal? Genya can come, she can change my appearance. No one has to know anything about me being the Sun Summoner. I wouldn't even have to stay for a day."

"Do you think the Little Palace is free from spies?" The Darkling's voice washed over her, cool and sure and unrelenting. She shivered. "Your absence would be noted. Ravka is large, but her enemies are many. Maybe you would be found, maybe you wouldn't. But sooner or later, your footsteps would be traced. Keramzin would suffer for it. This boy, that you care so much about? He would suffer for it."

"Then bring him here!" The words exploded out of her before she could stop them, pushed out by a sudden, awful realisation that she was never going to see Mal again. Hard on the heels of that realisation was another one, equally as terrible.

She found she didn't mind as much as she should have. She was forgetting him. She had thought she couldn't live without him, but it had been proved beyond doubt over the past year that she could. She was doing fine - better than fine. And there was no sign that that would change.

She felt like a traitor. And looking at the way the Darkling's eyes hardened again, she couldn't tell who to.

"Have you been ill-treated, here?"

"Wh-what?"

He stood, abruptly, and the swirl of his _kefta_ around him seemed more ominous than humorous. Alina felt herself shrinking back into her chair as he approached her, his steps perfectly measured. He crouched before her, one cold hand taking her chin and directing her face up to look at him. It wasn't hard, it wasn't cruel - she almost would have termed the touch gentle, if she hadn't been so suddenly frightened. That familiar surge of power rose up in her, but the surety - the calm - was absent this time. She couldn't reach it.

"I asked if you have been ill-treated," he said evenly, but his evenness was worse than if he'd yelled. "Have your lessons, your friends, your position at the Little Palace made you unhappy?"

Something thick and painful clawed its way up her throat. Tears pricked at her eyes. "No."

The Darkling didn't seem to notice. He continued, inexorable. "A lot has been done to make you comfortable, here. Even so, if it was safe, I would take you to Keramzin myself. But it isn't."

There was a pause. Alina was mostly sure she had stopped breathing, not wanting to make things worse.

"You ask for what no Grisha has ever received. Bring him here? What would he do? The boy does not dream of being a servant while you grow into your rightful place, _solnyshko_. If he were here, he would come to resent you and everything you represent. There is a reason that Grisha are separated from _otkazat'sya._ With distance, comes reverence, closer Grisha get to them, the more that turns to fear, to hatred. I would not see that happen to you."

They were kind words, in a way. Objectively, Alina could understand that he was trying to impress the reality of the situation onto her, like that would make it easier.

But Alina, at the heart of it, was a nine year old girl. Objectivity was not her strong point. So she stared back at him in the silence after that speech, stared and stared until she couldn't stare any longer and the wall all of that staring had built came crashing down. Tears spilled over her eyelids, her whole body shaking with the force of them. She lifted her hand, biting down on the side to try and stifle the sob that had been working its way into her mouth, but it was no good.

"I'm - sorry!" she gasped. "I didn't mean to, I'm sorry. I just wanted - I wanted-"

She didn't even know what she had wanted, and that was the worst part. To see Mal? Yes, absolutely. But there was that other part of her, the part that had pushed her into bringing it up, and that didn't have anything to do with Mal. That was all jealousy, all a sudden and new need to be _first_. To be the best.

"Please stop looking at me like that." She twisted her head, trying to break away from his hold on her. He let go almost immediately. "_Please_, I didn't mean to make you mad."

The silence stretched on. Another sob shuddered through Alina's body, and was chased not long after by a fear as cold as his voice had been. Had she made things worse? She had made things worse. The Darkling wasn't the kind of man to suffer tears, not even from the Sun Summoner. Maybe especially not from her. Maybe-

"Forgive me, _solnyshko_."

His hand was a soft, soothing weight on her shoulder. Not a solid one, though - his touch was almost tentative, like he wasn't sure that this was the appropriate path to take. The image of the Darkling's massive, strategic mindpower abruptly arrested by a crying nine year old was so completely ridiculous that a snort of laughter broke through Alina's tears, although they didn't yet stop.

"I was harsh with you," he continued, and Alina thought that through the haze of her crying, she could see a faint smile twitch in response to her laugh. "I forget, sometimes, that you are only young."

"You call me _little sun_," she pointed out, before she could stop herself. But any traces of the stranger had long since erased themselves from his visage, and that faint smile eased her fear, the worry that he had suddenly started to see her like - well, like anyone else.

"Ah." The smile widened, as the crying slowly ceased. "Should I stop?"

That hadn't been her point at all, but Alina shook her head violently anyway, just in case he was serious.

He wasn't. And so they both moved on from the Incident, although it was a long time before Alina could shake the image of those steel gray eyes, carving into her with a Healer's - or Heartrender's - precision.

**viii.**

He was in Os Alta long enough to attend her birthday celebration. His gift, bestowed in front of everyone, was a bracelet of beaded alexandrite, to match the necklace she wore prominently at her throat.

He left the next day. When she was sure he was gone, Alina carefully unstrung the bracelet, removing just one of the beads before putting it back together again.

It went into the drawer, next to the littlest nesting doll.


	8. Chapter 8

**i.**

Alina began to visit Baghra more.

At first, it wasn't intentional, nothing she actually thought about. She'd just go to Baghra's once they were done on the grounds, and continue to needle the woman about her powers, how old she was, why she lived in a hut instead of the Little Palace.

How she knew the Darkling.

Baghra never gave her a straight answer - more frequently, Alina got a whack to the shins for her impertinence. But she had learnt over the months that a whack to the shins was as bad as Baghra got. Marie and Nadia murmured about how _brave_ she was, facing the dragon almost every day, but Alina didn't feel brave.

Baghra was Baghra. And, Alina was starting to realise, Baghra was _honest_.

Not that everyone went around lying to get, but - well, Os Alta still wasn't an overly honest place. Especially when it came to the Darkling.

She wasn't stupid. She knew that the face of him that she thought of as the stranger was just as much a part of him as the quiet, contemplative man who sent her presents. He tried to hide it from her, which she appreciated on one level. But on another, it just made her wonder what else he was hiding.

"He does things to people, doesn't he?" she said one evening, sitting cross legged on the floor, near the fire. It was heading into autumn again,a nip in the air.

Baghra paused. It was faint, barely there, but Alina had learnt by now that the woman rarely hesitated before unleashing her wrath.

"Be more specific," she snapped.

It was as good as a yes. Alina nodded to herself, fingers twisting in the black of her clothes.

"I don't like it."

Baghra snorted. "The people on the receiving end probably like it a lot less, girl." Her lip curled. "There's nothing that boy wouldn't do for Ravka."

"No, I know. That's not what I meant." Alina thought for a moment, trying to find a way to word her problem. "I don't...want to have things hidden from me. If he's not nice sometimes, he's not, but I don't want him to pretend that he _is_ all the time." She looked down, mumbling the next part. "It just makes it scarier when he forgets."

There was another one of those long pauses, before gnarled fingers reached down to grasp her chin. Her face was forced without kindness or care up to meet gray eyes, and a quiet thought kindled in the back of Alina's mind.

"You should be scared of him," Baghra said. "He is all he appears to be, Alina Starkov."

It was the first time Baghra had called her by name. It added such weight to the situation, Alina felt as though the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for her response to send it all crashing down.

She nodded again. Unclenched her fingers from her clothes, smoothed them out again. "Okay," she said simply, trying to ignore Baghra's hand on her chin. "Thank you."

Another snort. "Idiot children will be the death of me." She let go of Alina's face, and waved her hand towards a bookshelf. "If you're going to be a nuisance, at least don't be a useless one. Read to me, girl."

Once, the thought would have filled her with trepidation. Now, however, Alina simply grinned, pushing herself to her feet. "Yes, Baghra."

**ii.**

"My brother is dead."

_No tears this time_, was Alina's first dazed thought. Ivan was leaning against the wall outside her room, arms crossed over his chest. It almost would have been casual, if not for the hard, defiant stare he was giving her _oprichniki_.

"I'm…" What was she supposed to say to that? Alina's second thought was the brief, irrational wish that Ivan's family would stop dying, because she'd run out of platitudes with the uncle. "I'm sorry, Ivan. That's awful."

"Yeah." He dragged his eyes from her guards to her, and that hard look dissipated. Just a little bit.  
"It is. And my younger brother gets drafted next year."

There was a haunted look in his eyes, she realised. Something like a certainty, that his little brother was going to die, just like the rest of his family. Alina's third thought, also absurd, was that her orphaning had been much less painful. A single cut, and done. Not these thin slices, pain building up into agony, wondering when the next one would come.

"Can he - I mean, is he looked after?" Alina asked after a moment. She couldn't help with that kind of pain. She didn't think anything would.

Ivan's face twisted. She'd seen it shift in grief before, but this wasn't like that. It was almost mocking, although if it was directed at her, or himself, or something else, she couldn't be sure.

"Grisha families are well provided for." He sounded like he was quoting someone. "He is fifteen and by himself. Our mother is long since passed."

"I'll send some things to him." Alina hoped she didn't sound too relieved, having hit upon a way she could help. "Not _provisions._ Just - things. And you could probably ask permission to visit, you know. Like Z-Zoya did."

Her tongue tripped at the memory, but Ivan didn't seem to notice. He shook his head, that hard note biting back into both voice and expression.

"I can't. When the Darkling next leaves for the border, I'm going with him."

Only the best were asked to remain with the Darkling on his travels. For Ivan to be recruited when he technically wasn't even a proper Grisha yet…

She had chosen her training partner well, apparently. Although the thought of a powerful Heartrender made her shudder, just a bit. The hardness in Ivan promised that it would be put to use.

"Don't-" she started, and then stopped, aware that she wasn't sure how to finish that sentence. Don't get hurt? Don't go crazy? Don't do anything for Ravka? "-forget me."

"Forget you?" The question seemed to amuse him. "I don't think there's a person in the whole country who's going to forget you, Alina. Plus. You made me a promise."

_I'm going to make sure it won't happen to anyone else._ A promise she'd already broken. Alina ducked her head, trying to stare holes into the ground.

A hand tucked her under the chin, and she heard her guards shifting behind her, ready to take Ivan down if need be. The boy himself was grinning down at her; the smile itself might have been genuine, but that too-intense hardness was still dominant in his gaze. "Grow up soon, Sun Summoner."

It wasn't blame in his voice, for her failure to fulfill what she'd promised. It was anticipation. Alina thought about what she knew of war, of what too much heat could do to a person, of what happened when you focused light too intently.

She waited until Ivan disappeared before she allowed herself a shudder.

**iii.**

Ivan's words stuck with her long after he left, distracting her, turning her mood sour. She even parted with the Darkling on a bad note, an impressive feat given how determined he'd been to be gentle with her since the Incident.

"Take care, _solnyshko_," he had said, with a faint warmth that might as well have been a hug, for how demonstrative the Darkling got.

Alina had scowled, frustration at him and herself and stupid Ivan boiling over. "Stop calling me that," she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

She'd gotten a raised eyebrow in return, but nothing else. The Darkling didn't demand explanations when his silence could do it for him.

"I'm not just a child!" she exploded. "I'm the Sun Summoner! I don't need to be protected, I don't need you to force yourself to be nice to me all the time, and I _definitely_ don't need to be your little sun!"

The silence had stretched in, becoming almost it's own entity. Alina practically vibrated with tension as it reached for her, twining around her body and tightening.

"I am going to show you something," he said finally. "It will scare you. You can say no."

Say no, and remain a child. That part went unspoken. Alina lifted her chin and squared her jaw, catching his gaze dead on.

"I've seen worse than whatever you're going to show me," she said, and distant memories of fire and screams became a little less distant.

She was the Sun Summoner. She was going to grow up. She would fulfill her promise.

The Darkling frowned slightly, and Alina had to wonder if he even knew the reason behind her being in Keramzin in the first place, or if he had just shrugged off everything about her previous life as though it didn't matter. She honestly couldn't blame him if it was the latter - it wasn't like she hadn't done exactly the same thing. Lingering too much on your past was seen as a sign of disrespect to the duke.

Then he sighed, with something like reluctance, and Alina felt a sliver of fear slip down her spine despite herself.

The clap was a quiet, soft thing, but it echoed through her like a crack of thunder. Darkness billowed out from his hands,a living, seeking thing. It's tentacles reached out, filling every inch of the room until there was nothing else. No room, no Darkling, nothing but the sound of her breath coming hard in her chest.

Strangely, it made her think of Mal. He had been the one afraid of the dark.

"What-" she started, but the Darkling's soft voice interrupted her.

"Summon."

She didn't have to be told twice. It was mid morning outside, the sun well on its path across the sky. Alina reached out gratefully for it, for the light and the heat, and for a brief moment she gave birth to a second sun in the palm of her hands, warm and glowing.

And then it was gone. Smothered by the dark, frowned, glancing uncertainly in the direction the Darkling had last been standing.

"Again."

She repeated the process, with more determination and effort this time. Again, the Darkling covered her efforts, and again, he demanded she summon.

Alina couldn't say how long it was before his point was made. She was stubborn; her body gave out before her will did, knees buckling under her. The darkness was gone in an instant, all of the Darkling's gentle cruelty gone as he caught her, leading her towards her sofa.

"Do you understand, _solnyshko_?"

She panted, squeezing her eyes shut. Images of her flickering, fading light filled her mind.

She was the Sun Summoner. And she was weak. A child

"I don't want to talk to you right now," she mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

He sighed. "I'm leaving, you know."

"Good!"

"I warned you."

"I don't. Care."

For a moment nothing happened, and Alina risked opening one eye to look up at him. The corner of his mouth had quirked up, for reasons she didn't understand. She crossed her arms tighter, and waited until he left.

She was glad she had looked, though. That smile, small and half-formed though it was, was a small comfort in the face of this new realisation.

**iv.**

"You silly little idiot," Genya sighed. She was standing in the doorway between Alina's receiving room and the bedroom, the only person other than the Darkling who had permission to enter freely. "What did you think was going to happen, challenging him? And over something as ridiculous as a nickname."

She pushed off the doorframe, hurrying over to Alina, who was sitting on the edge of her too-big bed, staring down at her hands. Before she was really aware of what was happening, her friend had tugged her into a hug, stroking her hair. The story had just sort of pulsed out of her, the words needing to escape after she had spent too much time ruminating on them.

"Was it very terrible?" Genya murmured.

Alina thought about the slide of his power over hers, the sheer helplessness of being _able _to summon, but simply not being _strong _enough to keep going.

There was something wonderful, about what the Darkling could do.

"Yes," she replied quietly. "It was." Because she couldn't do it.

_Grow up soon, Sun Summoner._

At least, not yet.

**v.**

One day, Alina would best the Darkling.

It wasn't a resentful thought. She didn't hate him for what he he had done - he was right after all. She had been warned.

No, this was a challenge. Another promise, and one that she would keep, about improving her skills and becoming the Sun Summoner that Ravka needed.

She would best him. She would be strong enough. And together, they would take down the Shadowfold.

**vi.**

Months passed. He didn't return. The winter was a particularly cruel one that year, and Alina kept her blood warm by throwing herself into her studies. She eked a few begrudging compliments out of Botkin, in spite of Ivan's absence, and even Baghra grumbled at her less.

She wrote first, signing off with a simple _I am getting better. Thank you._

His reply was short, and to the point. _I know, solnyshko. I expected nothing less of you._

Simple pleasure blossomed in her chest. There was something about that expectation that gave her hope, not concern. The Darkling didn't put his faith in things he didn't believe in.

The winter fete came and went. Alina and Genya skipped chores the night of it (those decidedly did _not_ count as training) and pretended as though they were going to, Genya abusing her abilities terribly to make them both as fabulous as possible. At thirteen, some girls might have considered dress-up beneath them; Genya, however, revelled in it.

"Dress-up is what I do, darling." She carefully wound a single lock of hair around her finger, creating a perfect curl. "Beauty is the same sort of armour as the clothes you wear. A weapon, too, if you know how to use it."

Alina wasn't sure where she'd picked up that _darling_ affectation, but she couldn't deny that it suited her friend. It was just such a decadent part of speech, and for all of Genya's usually simple dress, decadent fit her own beauty to a T.

"If beauty is a weapon, then you are the strongest person I know," Alina informed her.

Gold eyes sparkled back at her, enhanced by Saints only knew what. Genya's kit had expanded in recent months. "Of course I am."

**vii.**

She wrote to Ivan's brother (who was called Dmitri, had a fascination with everything Grisha, but was content to settle for soldiering). She wrote to Ivan, who had settled into life in the Second Army with an unsettling sort of ease. She wrote to the Darkling still, even though she probably got more information actually _about_ him from Ivan, who seemed to be in a constant state of awe and terror when it came to the man.

It wasn't, Alina thought, a bad mix to aim for. She could definitely use some more of that when it came to Zoya, who was less than pleased with Alina's new focus on her training. Especially when Botkin moved her up a class - even without Ivan, her physical prowess had increased enough that the old man thought she could handle the more experienced students.

Zoya smiled brighter and hit harder than everyone else. The only thing that kept Alina from losing her temper completely and just blinding the other girl was the fact that she _knew_ Zoya was seeking some kind of reaction, the satisfaction that she was one of the few people who could get under the skin of the Sun Summoner

"You could always, oh, I don't know - stop spending time around her when you don't have to?" Genya suggested.

Alina shook her head. "I can't. Then she'd win."

"Yes, well. _Your _winning is making breakfast like walking a verbal minefield."

That was true. Zoya's tongue was cutting, and Alina only rarely managed to managed to get one over on her. She almost prefer the physical jabs.

A spasm of pain radiated out from her ribs as she stalked along the corridor towards her room. _Almost_. Feet clattered behind her, but she ignored it - if they were a problem, her _oprichniki_ would do something about-

A sharp gasp tore itself from her teeth, and she whirled on tall, gangly figure who had just about pushed her over in his haste to get down the hall. Sunlight pooled in her fingertips, and for a moment she wondered what would happen if she threw it at him.

"Ah!" A wide grin split the boy's face, a strange mixture of mischief and relief. "You must be the Sun Summoner I have heard so very much about." Hazel eyes flickered briefly over her head, and Alina looked instinctively behind her. Her guards were there, looking a little sheepish, and so was the heavier, shuffling sound of more footsteps.

Alina clenched her fingers on the light, dispersing it. "What, exactly, have you heard about me?"

"That you are a protector of the innocent, a saviour of men, and inclined to help a stranger in need?" the boy asked hopefully.

Alina wasn't sure she was any of those things, and the baffled look on her face probably said it.

"BOY, YOU GET BACK HERE WITH THAT PIE! BY THE SAINTS, I'M GOING TO SKEWER YOU AND ROAST YOU ALIVE!"

The boy winced, seeing Alina's eyebrows skate up her forehead. "Strangely enough, I don't find myself enticed to return!" he shot back over her head, before grasping her shoulder with one hand. He couldn't use both, she noted, because he was carefully balancing a pie on the other.

"Innocent," she repeated flatly.

"This has all been a terrible misunderstanding!"

Alina waited. The shuffling grew closer.

"Well - no, all right. I took the pie, I admit it. But in my defense, a head chef really should be keeping a better eye on their kitchen, and not sleeping by the fire." His face, open and expressive, took on a pleading look that almost seemed genuine. "Help me, Sun Summoner. You're my only hope."

It was only a second, a brief flashback that returned her to Keramzin, to sneaking into the kitchens with Mal, getting caught at times, making their escape with some stolen treat more often. Just a second, but sometimes, that was all a person needed.

"I want half," she announced.

One of her guards choked on a laugh.

"What?"

"The pie. I want half."

The boy looked pained. "A quarter."

She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "Half, or I'll leave you to your _thoroughly earned_ fate right now."

The shuffling was thumping now, and Alina saw a thick smear of white starting to round the corner. The boy squeezed his eyes shut, before heaving a sigh. One last, mournful look was given to his pie, before he nodded.

"You drive a hard bargain, but I'm not a big fan of fate. Half it is."

Alina grinned up at him, triumphant, before primly turning her back on him in time to meet the chef's purple, puffed up face.

"GIRL, YOU BETTER NOT BE-"

"Ex_cuse_ me." Alina let the light bloom between her fingers again, cutting the man off mid-sentence. "You're interrupting."

She spoke the way she did on those rare occasions that she had Zoya by the throat, adding a sweet smile for good measure. The man looked like he was about to protest, when he finally noticed the light in her palms.

He abruptly deflated, the purple in his face draining to white so fast she was concerned for his health. She opened her mouth to ask if he was all right, but he'd already fled, thoughts of the pie apparently gone from him.

"Well," the boy said from behind her. "That was effective."

He had a dagger out, and was already slicing the dessert deftly in half when Alina turned back to him. Her eyes widened - what _were_ her guards doing, letting someone get that close to her with a weapon? But then there was half a pie in her hands, warm and sweet smelling, and Alina forgot to ask.

"I'd say it was a pleasure doing business with you, my lady, but I fear I've been robbed." He swept her a bow anyway, backing away as he did so. "I bid thee adieu, before I lose anymore of my ill-gained profits to your greedy hands."

"My hands are _not_ greedy," she protested, but he was already disappearing around the corner. It had been so long since anyone but Genya had spoken to her like that, she wasn't sure whether to be pleased, or offended. "Wait! What's your name?"

"Ask your guards!"

Genya, of course, found the whole experience far too amusing. "I can't believe," she laughed, "that you met a prince of Ravka without even realising it."

"How was I supposed to know?" Alina demanded. "He didn't behave anything like a prince. And he looked nothing like his father."

Genya arched an eyebrow at her. "You are _far_ from the first person to notice."

**viii.**

The Darkling returned with summer, but Alina didn't seek him out. Their written correspondence had picked up, of course, but she still hadn't _seen_ him since their unfortunate goodbye. She might have been training since then, but she only had to think about the effortless way he had pinched out her power to know that it was merely another drop against his ocean.

Alina could feel a strange sort of desperation growing in her. She didn't speak about it to anyone, but where her power had once been such a joy to her, it no longer seemed...enough. She could create light, whole lakefuls of the stuff, beauty and heat and life, but what could she do with it? It clearly wasn't enough to destroy the Fold, or else the Darkling would have taken her to do that already.

She wanted more. She _needed_ to be able to do more, or else what was Sun Summoner even good for?

_Scaring chefs and putting on light shows_.

She turned eleven, and spent half the day trying to decide if the jewels on the hairpins the Darkling gave her meant something - they were diamond this time, rather than alexandrite. Had there been any kind of significance to his previous gifts, or was it simply coincidence that alexandrite had caught his eye two years in a row, while diamond occupied his attention now?

It hurt her head to think about, so she didn't. There was a party that night, a celebration in her honour. The Darkling couldn't attend, caught in another debacle with the King, but she still had Genya slide the pins into her hair.

Ivan was there. For some absurd reason, seeing him made Alina glad she had decided to look her best.

**ix.**

"Come with me." There was a strange note of apprehension in Genya's voice. "There's someone I want you to meet."

"I'm busy right now."

And she was. A single beam of sunlight split the leafy canopy overhead, thick and unyielding. It seemed almost like a solid thing, if not for the spectre of a tree trunk wavering through from behind it. Baghra had refused to teach her more offensive skills, so Alina was making them up.

Sort of. She didn't have a use for 'pillar of hot light' yet, but she was sure she would think of one. Hopefully.

"You've been out here for hours."

She could sense the tension in Genya's body, even though she didn't turn her head. The hesitation.

"It's the weekend," Alina pointed out. She could feel a bead of sweat trickling down the side of her face, her whole body damp and sticky. "I can spend my time how I like."

Silence. It took a couple of seconds for Alina to realise the shift in her voice, the imperious, immovable voice. Her hands shook, and after a beat or two, she lowered them. The light winked out of existence.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

Genya was staring at her. The older girl was usually a master of her expression, but the startled, wide eyes said that Alina had taken her by surprise somehow, enough so that she couldn't quite hide it.

"What?" Alina smeared a hand over her face self-consciously, which probably didn't help with whatever Genya was looking at.

"Nothing." The response was immediate, before Genya gave herself a little shake, tugging on a smile. "You just look beautiful, dear. Exhausted and smelly, but gorgeous."

"...Oh."

And that was the way with Grisha, wasn't it? The more power you used, the more beautiful you were.

It occurred to Alina then that the Darkling could probably be considered good-looking. Beautiful himself, even, if you could use that word with a man. Alina wasn't sure. It did make sense, though.

She puffed out her cheeks, levering herself to her feet. The scent of sweat and charred grass wafted behind her. "Is it all right if I bathe before going to meet this stranger of yours?"

Genya wrinkled her nose a little. "Please. I insist."

**x.**

"This is David."

Alina blinked, a little uncertain. _David_ didn't even appear to have noticed that people had entered the room, bent over a workbench as he was. Fiddly bits of mirror surrounded him, and one of his fingers was sullenly oozing blood.

He didn't seem to have noticed that, either.

"David." Genya's voice held an eternal patience as she touched his shoulder lightly. "Say hello to the Sun Summoner."

"Alina is fine," Alina said, hard on her heels. The title sat ill at ease with her lately.

Genya sighed, a _what am I going to do with you?_ sort of sound. Alina wasn't sure if that was supposed to be directed at her, or David. Who, it seemed, was a Durast. She followed a stray flicker of light with her eyes, the way it bounced off the myriad of mirrors under the boy's bloody fingers.

"What?" David started, like he'd just realised there were people in the room, and that one of them was touching them. She could almost see him replaying the sounds of the last minute or two in his head, translating them into a language he could understand. "Oh. Hello, Sun Summoner."

He returned to his work. Alina shot a frustrated look at Genya, confused as to what she was even doing here. Genya just sighed again, poking the boy in the shoulder.

"_David_. Tell the - tell Alina what you're working on."

"Gloves," he replied absently. He must have been aware of his injured finger in _some_ capacity, because he deftly avoided letting it drip anywhere, his work pristine. Peering a little closer, Alina could see that the black (of course) material underneath the mirrors was, in fact, shaped into a pair of gloves. "Mirrors reflect light. You'll be able to dazzle an opponent, blind them probably. It'll help your control. Focus. I thought about it a while ago, so it's pretty easy to put together."

Alina's mouth opened, and then shut again. _Focus_. She could focus her power, direct it in any direction she liked - so long as that was all she was doing. If she needed her hands for something else - like defending herself - she was as good as useless when it came to control.

The gloves, if they worked, would change that.

"If you thought about them a while ago, why are you only making them now?"

"Had other projects. Durasts don't usually work on things for specific students, just Grisha. And I'm technically not supposed to-"

"David's still a student like us," Genya interrupted smoothly. "So no one asked him. Most Grisha don't start getting personalised weapons until they're actually Grisha, but I've seen you lately. You need something...more."

"If you need anything else," David added, still focused on his work, "let me know. I have a few other ideas."

**xi.**

Alina was eleven and a half years old when Vasily Lantsov, Crown Prince of Ravka, demanded a meeting with her.

In the middle of practicing with her gloves, Alina accidentally singed the edge of her curtain. She was halfway through a curse when she remembered just who it was speaking to her, exactly, and broke off. Hurrying over to check she hadn't done too much damage, she could feel the embarrassed heat crawling up the back of her neck.

"Why _now_?" she demanded, making no mention of the scene she'd just created.

The Darkling's voice was touched with amusement when he spoke again, but he gave her the dignity of not bringing it up. "It seems someone let slip about an encounter you had with his brother."

Alina snorted, tucking the burnt edge of the curtain in on itself so it couldn't be seen, before straightening. "If he wants pie, I'm sure there's any number of chefs willing to make one for him."

She was in a bad mood, and nervous besides. One, she wasn't entirely sure if she was allowed to have the gloves. Two, she still hadn't mastered using them. Setting a curtain on fire hadn't exactly been a part of her grand plan to show the Darkling how much she was improving.

"Vasily takes after his father," the Darkling said meaningfully.

It wasn't hard to figure out why. Alina set her jaw. "So I'm a prize, and he's mad he didn't win me first."

"Madder still he didn't realise it was a competition until now."

"Ugh."

The Darkling eyed her carefully. "A prince seeking your attention doesn't please you?"

"Being treated like a thing doesn't please me," she huffed. "And unless he can help me set things that aren't curtains on fire, I don't care who he is."

He smiled. It softened his face, made him seem younger. Alina wondered what it would be like, if he were really the age he appeared to be. Wondered how long _she_ would be that age.

"You honesty is a gift, _solnyshko_."

Alina tried not to make a face at the name. It was still a sore point for her, even if she didn't _really_ mind it. It still made her special to him after all, the only person who was important enough for him to address with some affection. "I don't think the prince will think so."

"The prince thinking," the Darkling mused. "A concept unheard of before now, I think."

She giggled, and for a moment it felt like older, simpler times. The weight of her title lifted from her shoulders, and she seemed to fill the air around her, instead of failing to walk in the shoes her power had created for her.

It was nice. But that strange desperation remained in her gut, killing her laughter. Alina sighed, carefully tugging off her gloves. "If the prince is making demands, I guess I have to fulfill them."

The Darkling's face returned to its usual unreadable set, grey gaze flickering to her new toy briefly. "You _are_ growing up."

**xii.**

Vasily took after his father in the worst possible ways. He left her hand wet after he kissed it, and stared at her expectantly like she was supposed to blush and duck her head at his gallantry. Alina's thoughts trailed briefly to the pie-prince's charming, easy manner, and thought she understood Vasily a little more. He must have lost more than one prize to his younger brother already.

Genya, she thought, would have known to handle this peacock of a man. Genya knew how to handle _most_ things. Alina, on the other hand, wasn't used to people speaking to her as though they were indulging her. Like she should be honoured that they would condescend to speak to her.

"If you are lucky, and train hard, we will be working together when you have grown up," he informed her. Alina wondered what he would do if she set his too-shiny shoes on fire. "Obviously, it makes sense for us to meet now."

_You didn't even remember I existed until the other prince let it slip he'd met me!_ The next time she saw that stupid boy's face, she was going to force him to meet with Zoya for an hour.

"I - of course," she managed. It was all she could get out around the other, ruder words crowding her throat. Making an enemy of the crown prince would be a terrible idea, she was pretty sure.

Vasily seemed to take her reticence as a sign of the demureness she'd been missing when he'd first greeted her, and beamed. Alina resisted the urge to gag, and sat patiently as he blathered on about his plans for a stable, and did she like riding (of course she did), and had she heard they'd found a rogue Grisha was fixing the races in Caryeva?

The crown prince did not like Grisha. The crown prince did not seem to understand the danger in letting this slip to an _actual Grisha._ By the time Alina managed to extricate herself from the meeting, her cheeks ached from the force of smiling with her teeth so tightly gritted.

"I won't even ask," Genya murmured, as she stomped back into the school's lunch hall. She was _starving_ - the prince had assumed she wouldn't want cake, and taken all the provided delicacies for himself!

"Only the Sun Summoner could be displeased about meeting the Crown Prince," Zoya sniffed.

Alina didn't bother to hide her scowl, or find something suitably clever to shoot back at her. "He's all yours," she said shortly, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that the heir to the kingdom was an _idiot._

**xiii.**

She didn't succeed. Vasily's smeary smile haunted her, his stupid lack of chin, his stupid _everything_. She could barely remember her meeting with the king, so long ago now, and that was a _problem_.

A king should have presence. A king should stick with a person long after they left his presence. A king should be able to talk about something other than _horses_. The feeling in Alina's gut gnawed deeper, and she took her frustrations out on her training, her learning. She even managed to hit Zoya, but instead of being satisfied by the experience, she mostly just wanted to hit her again.

She wanted to hit everything. And she knew she couldn't, which only made her want to hit things more.

Slowly, surely, the nightmares clawed their way back into Alina's life. This time, however, it wasn't Keramzin that burned. It was Ravka. She dreamed of Ivan's brother Dmitri, trying to make himself love conscription even in the face of his dead family. She dreamed of the Darkling, forced to be constantly on the move by a useless king. She dreamed of Baghra, turned bitter after too many years of living in a country that couldn't seem to save itself.

She dreamed, for the first time in a long time, of herself. Of Alina Starkov, who had gotten her surname from somewhere. Someone. Who had _fit_ somewhere, not spent years trying to grow into her place.

The dark circles never returned under her eyes, not with how much she pushed her power, but she could feel the memory of them resurface. She peered into her mirror, ran her fingers over the skin above her cheeks, pressing them into the bone as though she could make the skin purple again with a bit of prodding.

Twelve passed. She had to stop sending things to Dmitri, who said that the gifts made his fellow soldiers jealous, even though he appreciated them. They hadn't even been very impressive gifts, for that exact reason, but the poverty most of the First Army came from was dreadful.

"There's something wrong with this country," she said to the Darkling one summer night, walking along the lakeside with him. He was standing a bit apart from her, watching moths flutter around the ball of light she'd summoned to light their way.

"Yes," he agreed softly. "There is."

"Are you going to do something about it?"

Her gut roiled, the feeling trapped inside it gnashing its teeth, demanding release as the silence stretched out between them.

Finally, he looked at her. "Not without help."

**xiv.**

The feeling in her gut was _hunger_.

**xv.**

It was autumn, and the Darkling should have been heading out to the border - any of them - again. But it was the anniversary of something or other, which apparently _demanded_ the Darkling's presence, despite the fact that Ravka was in danger from practically all sides.

If Alina had spent years hating internal Grisha politics, she loathed external _otkazat'sya_ ones already. The Darkling's words of a few weeks past settled her a little, but not much. He hadn't said anything to her beyond _not without help._

But he had looked at her when he said it. And Alina had felt sure he'd meant _her_ help. And she was just as sure that the 'something' he planned didn't exactly stop with the dissolution of the Shadowfold.

Hence the reason his words had only helped settle her somewhat. A vague promise of involvement in something she didn't yet understand was just another kind of frustration, in a lot of ways.

So Alina went hunting for a way to deal with her frustration. She was pretty sure Zoya would poison her if she beat her at hand to hand again, but the urge to hit something was almost overwhelming. She ended up at the training rooms by the stable anyway, although she had the sense not to call on the other girl for help.

They were already in use. A group of impossibly beautiful young men and women had gathered in their varicoloured _kefta_, cheering - or jeering - on two people in the middle of their loose half circle.

"Ivan?" She blurted the name before she could help herself, matching the name to the head of wavy brown hair before she even realised that she recognised him. His head jerked up, over to her, and she almost didn't recognise him for the hard, arrogant smirk on his face.

And then his opponent, a lanky, bespectacled man, took advantage of his distraction. The look was gone, replaced by a solid blow to the face; Alina yelped, resisting the urge to slap a hand over her mouth in horror. It was just a fight, for crying out loud! She'd seen plenty, even participated in some.

"Little young for you, don't you think, Ivan?" someone yelled, and Alina felt an ugly red steal her cheeks.

She opened her mouth to shout something back in turn, she wasn't even sure what, but Ivan distracted her. His recovery from the punch was almost instantaneous, and she watched, astonished, as he laid into his opponent with a new ferocity. The bespectacled man staggered back, trying to defend himself, to even get his feet under him, but Ivan was relentless.

He hit the ground. Ivan lifted his foot, like he was about to kick him, when the man managed to get both of his hands up.

"I give," he panted. "Saints, Ivan, are your fists packed with lead? I give."

There was half a second there where Alina thought Ivan might just kick the man anyway. And then he laughed, the sound sharp enough to cut yourself on as he offered the man his hand instead.

"Don't take cheap shots, Fedyor. It's beneath you."

His opponent grumbled good naturedly, shooting a curious look at Alina. Ivan noticed, and then noticed that most of the other Grisha in the room seemed to be doing the same thing. With a studied sort of casualness, he wandered over to her and gave her a slight bow.

"Sun Summoner."

His face was flushed from exertion, even under his tan - and he was browner than he'd been when he left the last time, she noticed. There was a harsh pride lighting dark eyes, and she realised that he was pleased she'd seen his victory.

Alina had to say that she was pleased too, even if it meant a flurry of whispers whooshing through his companions at the sound of her title.

"You-" Her throat was, strangely, suddenly dry. She cleared her throat, feeling her cheeks grow hotter as she tried again. "You've improved. A lot."

"Combat does that to a man," he informed her, a scowl crossing his expression at the sound of a snort from somewhere behind him. "I've heard you're not doing bad yourself."

Feeling strangely shy, Alina tried for a smile. "I hit Zoya," she admitted.

"You've done the world a favour. Come on." He jerked his head towards the still clear half circle. "Show me."

"I-" There was no hiding her nerves as she glanced around at their curious audience. For all that she'd been thinking about her duties as Sun Summoner for months now, it hadn't occurred to her to wonder about what _others_ thought of them, outside the Little Palace. What they thought of her.

But she couldn't back down now, couldn't look weak or afraid. And...despite his brutality with Fedyor, she trust him not to embarrass her in front of this crowd. After a barely perceptible pause, Alina gave a firm nod, pushing past him and striding towards the circle.

Someone whistled, but the sound wasn't rude. Grisha knew better than to underestimate small or young opponents. Curiosity remained the central emotion around her as she settled into an easy stance, warily watching the way Ivan moved as he approached her.

He was fast, but he was carrying more weight on him now than the last time they'd sparred, all of it muscle. And Alina's own speed had improved; she ducked under his first jab, dancing back out of his reach.

A slow grin curled across his lips, and he nodded his approval; she just about tripped over her own feet for some stupid reason. He took advantage, because of course he did, and Alina sucked in a sharp gasp of pain as his fist clipped her side.

He was pulling them. Too much, actually - past the initial shock of pain, the sensation faded almost immediately, and she felt a scowl settle over her features.

"Don't underestimate me," she chided him.

"Do you know what the Darkling would do to me if I broke you, Alina?"

"Who says you're going to do _that_?" she shot back. "And besides, do you see him here?"

Another ripple pulsed through the crowd , and as Alina went on the offensive, she vaguely registered it as shock, although she was too abruptly distracted by Ivan's defence to figure out what it was she'd said that had been so shocking.

It was a massively uneven fight, and everyone had known that from the start. But Alina thought she managed to hold her own well enough, the laboured way Ivan's chest began to rise and fall confirming that thought for her, even as she felt sweet crawling down her spine, pooling in the small of her back.

That embarrassed her as well, which was ridiculous - she'd done this dozens of time with the older boy before, hadn't she? Alina wasn't afraid of getting sweaty in public. She was Grisha, it wasn't like it did that much damage to her.

Still, she couldn't help but feel self-conscious, and as the bout went on, that only proved to be a distraction. Ivan himself wasn't helping, either. He was wearing a light, abbreviated _kefta_, the red sleeves cut to his shoulders; she could see the bunch and slide of muscles under sun-bronzed skin every time he shifted, and he shifted a _lot_.

Alina felt her face getting even hotter, and her palms as well. For the second time, she nearly tripped over her feet, and for the second time, he took advantage. It brought them in closer together, and it was only a faint commotion near the door that saved her from ending up on her backside.

The Darkling had arrived, a smear of darkness amongst the bright _kefta_ of the other Grisha. It distracted Ivan more than her - something uncertain flickered across his face, but one look at the thoughtful expression on the Darkling's own face had told Alina that there was nothing to worry about. So she slammed her fist into Ivan's gut, grinning at the soft huff of air it drove from him.

"Pay attention!" she admonished, and then wrinkled her nose a little. Something smelled off, like the curtain she'd singed the day she'd found out Vasily wanted to meet her.

But Ivan didn't respond, the set of his face suddenly serious, focussed. They'd traded a few jokes during the session, but now he was silent, splitting his attention between Alina and occasional, quick glances at the Darkling.

Frustration bloomed in Alina's gut, consuming the ever-present hunger there for a moment. She threw her all into the next punch, and the one after that, even though she knew it was stupid. Ivan was better than her - stronger, faster, smarter - and she was leaving herself wide open with no way to cover.

But Alina didn't care. All of a sudden, that need to just _hit _something had overtaken her, and there was no saying no to it.

It happened without warning. A flash, a hiss, a surprised shout of pain from Ivan; a few seconds later, the scent of singed flesh filtered through the air, accompanied by a loud curse. Ivan stumbled back away from her, clutching the forearm he'd lifted to block her blow.

"_Shit_, Alina, what the-" Another glance back at the Darkling, and he fell silent, gritting his teeth.

Alina stared back at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. "I didn't-" she stuttered, eyes dropping to the burn mark she'd just seared into his skin. "I'm sorry-"

A woman she didn't know had come forward, and Ivan turned away from her to let the Healer see to the wound. Desperately, Alina's gaze sought out the Darkling, as though he would somehow have the answer for what had just happened.

"I think, _solntse_," and the shift in her nickname lanced through her like a bolt of lightning, "that it is time I saw more personally to your training."

**interlude.**

A small crowd had gathered beneath the base of the tree. The boy grinned down at them all as he reached higher, grasping at the ever-thinning branches, pulling himself up further.

"Give it up, Mal!" someone yelled. "There's no way you're beating that record without killing yourself!"

"Well, now you've made it a challenge," the boy shouted back. Scored into the bark in front of his face was a mark with a pair of initials next to it. Ignoring the disquiet in his gut, he defeated another few feet of tree and pulled out a steak knife he'd stolen from the kitchen a few months ago, making his own mark.

_M.O._

"There's no way he'll do it." A worried voice carried up through the leaves. "Boris was in bed for a month when he tried."

"This is Mal," someone else pointed out. "He'll do it."

The boy couldn't help but grin. Manoeuvring himself about, he tried to aim for a gap in the branches. That seemed like the least painful way to do it. Thoughtlessly, he tucked the knife back into his pocket.

"Incoming!" he yelled to the bystanders, so far below.

And then he dropped.


	9. Chapter 9

**i.**

It didn't take Alina long to find Ivan, afterwards.

Word spread fast. Not that anyone had refused her all that much before, but when she asked questions now, people practically tripped over their own tongues to answer her.

It felt...good. Before, it had been the Darkling's mark on her that made people listen, maybe with a few rumours thrown in for good measure. Now, it was something she had done, and Alina had a vision of a future where she was powerful in her own right all the time, where people were more concerned about how _she_ would react than how the Darkling would.

Of course, then she remembered exactly why people were so nervous, and the guilt began to creep up on her. Having people fear she was going to burn them to a crisp wasn't the sort of power she was looking for.

She didn't think.

Alina half expected to find that Ivan was in an infirmary somewhere (she knew there was one, but she'd never visited herself). She hadn't seen the burn directly, but the fact that she had been able to smell it was an indication of how deep it went. Instead, she was directed outside, down to the lake. He was sitting cross legged on a patch of grass, watching the last dying rays of the sun play across the surface.

She hovered at the edge of a line of trees. He was still in that cut off kefta, and she could see the mark of her fist still seared into his skin. It was faded, though, blurry. The Healer had done a good job - maybe there wouldn't even be a scar.

"Are you going to say something, Alina, or did you want to just stand there some more?"

The humour in his voice made her jump more than the fact that he was speaking at all. Alina sucked in a breath, before striding across the grass to cross her arms at him. "I'm sorry."

It didn't sound like an apology. It sounded like a confrontation. She didn't like being laughed at, even if it was a good thing that he'd found something funny about the situation.

He lifted his head to squint up at her. Whatever shock she'd wrung from him earlier in the day was gone now, his face having settled back into that easy arrogance she'd first seen when he was fighting the man called Fedyor.

He gave her a lazy grin, and Alina realised that the arrogance suited him.

"Sorry for what?"

Her eyebrows skated up her forehead, even as she wrestled with a blush, stuffing it forcibly back down. Her hands flew out, gesturing at his arm. "What do you think!?"

He glanced down at the burn. "You mean the physical proof that the Sun Summoner is getting stronger?"

"Stop calling me that," she huffed. "I'm not - I mean, I'm stronger, but I'm still not strong. Not yet. And I have a name. And I _burned you_."

"I know you have a name. I used it before."

She resisted the urge to kick him.

"I've taken worse, Alina." It wasn't said reassuringly. There was a tilt to his head, a tug to his mouth that said he was proud of whatever wounds he'd won. "I can deal with a burn. Especially if it means _you_ are starting to use your power for more than just light shows."

Alina lost the battle with her cheeks, feeling the blush heat her skin. "So you're saying I should just go around crisping people up, is that it?"

Ivan leaned back on his hands, and Alina's gaze dipped without her say so, briefly examining the stretch of his biceps before snapping back up to his face. "If that's what it takes."

It was a disturbing thought. But not, perhaps, as disturbing as it should have been.

"I think being in the field has turned your head," she declared.

"Maybe. But that doesn't make me any less right."

Alina made a face at him. A beat passed, two, before she finally gave in and dropped into the grass next to him. And as the sun sunk past the horizon, she spun light in her fingers and let it dance out across the lake.

**ii.**

"What are you doing?"

Alina spun away from the mirror, tugging her hands from her face. "Nothing."

Genya raised both eyebrows. "It didn't look like nothing."

"Well, it _was_."

"Mm hmm." The older girl strode forward, coming up behind Alina, who sighed and returned her gaze to the mirror. Genya bent down, resting her chin on her shoulder. "Your cheekbones are fine."

Alina snorted, trying not to compare the pale perfection of Genya's face to hers. It wasn't like she was _un_attractive. She was Grisha. But she had the kind of features that people described as striking, not stunning. Genya was all soft curves and complimentary colours, lively and vibrant.

Alina was…

A thumb smoothed over the curve of her cheek. "You have the looks to carry your power, Alina. And you're not done growing yet. Trust me, once puberty has its way with you, the world isn't going to know what hit it."

"_Genya_."

Her friend laughed, a light, tinkling sound. She dropped a quick kiss on the place where her thumb had been, and pulled away.

"Ah, but maybe the Sun Summoner doesn't want the whole world to notice yet, hmm? Maybe there's just one person she's interested in?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

But her cheeks betrayed her, flaring bright red. Genya made a sound of delight and gripped her shoulders, steering her back to the bed and dropping them both down onto it. "Tell me everything."

"There isn't anything to tell!"

"You are a terrible liar, Alina."

She pressed her own hands to her cheeks, like she could somehow force the heat out. Actually, when she thought about that, she wondered if she could, but Genya's laughter distracted her.

"Fine! Don't tell me, cruel thing. I'll get it out of you eventually. Just reassure me that it isn't - oh, Sergei. Or Zoya, saints forbid. I don't think I could take that."

Alina choked. "_No_. It's not - Genya! I don't even _like_ Zoya!"

"That," Genya said sagely, "has very little to do with it."

Both her face and her voice were bright with amusement, but once Alina managed to settle her suddenly frayed nerves (and banish any thoughts of the sunlight playing through Ivan's dark hair), she realised that there was something - off, about her friend. Genya was kind, always, and the two girls had grown close over the years. But there was a forced edge to her affection now. Not false, exactly, but like she was trying to focus on it in lieu of something else.

"Is everything all right, Genya?" She reached for one of her friend's hands, the soft fingers having slipped from her shoulders.

"Hm? Oh - of course." The older girl smiled, and it was dazzling. Too bright. "Why do you ask?"

That, more than anything else, was a sign that there was definitely something up. Genya was the queen of changing the subject. There had to be something the matter, for her to fail to do so now. Alina frowned, squeezing the hand in her grasp, feeling it twitch in response.

"Because I can tell that it's not."

For a moment, the smile froze on Genya's face, and Alina thought she was going to keep forcing it, belatedly initiate a change in topic. But then she bit her lip, shoulders slumping, and after a moment or two, she looked away.

"Things are going to change, Alina," she said softly.

"Did something happen?"

That just got a headshake from her friend. The motion seemed to shake some stubbornness back into Genya's spine, and no matter how Alina prodded her for an explanation, she refused to engage. Eventually, she gave up, allowing Genya to do something new with her hair instead.

But the words stayed with her, long after Genya would admit to remembering the conversation.

**iii.**

"Curls?" There was nothing but amusement in the Darkling's voice.

Alina sniffed, crossing her arms over her chest. Her hair bounced slightly with the motion. "Genya says they're adorable."

"Genya would know."

It was near the end of winter, and she had been training with the Darkling for nearly three months now. It had been awkward, at first - afraid of hurting someone, or destroying too much private property, she hadn't been able to focus.

The Darkling had quickly taken care of that. It was the first time she had seen the Cut performed. Ivan had written to her about it, of course, but it was one thing to try and imagine it, and another to watch the pure nothingness slice through a nearby wall.

"Property destruction is not a concern," he informed her easily. "And I would be a poor commander if I let a twelve year old hurt me. Stop holding back, _solntse_."

The demonstration and the reassurance had helped, of course, but if Alina was honest? It was the new nickname that had convinced her. She was still settling into it, like a pair of new shoes that needed to be broken in, but she liked it. Not little sun. _The _sun. Sunshine.

So she had stopped holding back. The sun, after all, didn't bother.

**iv.**

At least, until the chicken.

Alina had sort of suspected her training was leading up to this. The dark comments and sneers Baghra had greeted her excitement over training with the Darkling had been a hint, as had the fact that he'd only insisted on training her personally after she'd hurt Ivan.

She hadn't told Genya, uncertain if the other girl would be able to reassure her, or if she'd simply make light of her concerns. Instead, she'd done her best to prepare herself for the possibility on her own.

Watching the chicken cluck mindlessly about the training room, she wasn't sure she'd succeeded.

"You're hesitating," the Darkling said softly. He stood behind her. Not close - there had to be at least a foot between them, but that didn't matter. She was attuned to his presence, after years and these past months in his presence. It burnt into her back as hotly as anything her power could muster.

"You haven't told me what you want me to do," she pointed out, just as softly. She had the strangest urge to lean back, rest against him, but - she wasn't a child anymore. Casual touching wasn't something you _did_ with the Darkling when you didn't have the excuse of being eight years old.

"Do I have to?"

She let that sit in the space between them for a moment, eyes locked on the chicken.

"No."

She had to touch it directly. Her 'column of burning light' idea was hot enough to sting, maybe, but not burn. At least, not fast. She felt her face flush red with embarrassment as she had to chase the chicken around the room for a moment or two, but vague memories of the orphanage, or maybe even before Keramzin, enabled her to get her hands around the creature's small body.

Its pulse raced under her fingertips, beating a tattoo into her skin. Alina ignored that, ignored everything except the sunlight streaming in through an open window and the dark presence of the Darkling behind her.

She wanted to do this. She wanted to be powerful. She wanted to please him. The words thrummed in her mind in time to the chicken's heartbeat as she summoned her strength and focussed it on her hands.

There was a sudden, sharp squawk. And then her hands were empty, and the smell of charred meat and feathers sliced through the air.

Ash sifted from her fingers. Alina stared at it for a moment, and then smiled.

"I did it."

A hand settled itself on her shoulder, the smallest finger brushing her neck. "You've done well." He paused. "I should send someone to inform the kitchens, though. I think they were expecting to use that one in dinner tonight."

**v.**

The most difficult part to deal with was that she didn't feel bad. Some part of Alina thought that she should - that chicken hadn't done anything to her, after all. But she ate chicken sometimes, and other animals. Did it make a difference, who killed them, or how?

Deep down, Alina knew the chicken wasn't the issue, just like she knew Ivan wasn't called a Heartrender because of the amount of girlfriends he'd had. Grisha killed people. Not all of them, and not always, but it happened. To protect Ravka.

The Darkling wasn't training her to cook dinner. This was a first step, and while she might have hesitated, she had taken it without guilt or remorse.

Alina thought of blue eyes, of a chubby hand clutching hers, and rolled her neck irritably. She didn't even remember what Mal had looked like, anymore. She doubted he would recognise the person she had become.

Maybe that was why she thought of him during moments like these.

**vi.**

"What was it like for you, growing up?"

Alina was sprawled on the floor of her receiving room, legs stretched out towards the fire. She didn't really get cold anymore, but the heat was still a pleasant luxury as it played over her skin. Somewhere behind her, the Darkling was seated on her sofa.

When her question was greeted with silence, she twisted her body around to look back at him. She wouldn't say _he_ was sprawled, but he was certainly relaxed in a way she hadn't seen around other people. One elbow rested on the arm of the couch, and his chin rested loosely on the backs of his curled fingers as he eyed her.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked finally, and she thought she caught the faint note of real curiosity in his studiously calm voice.

She grinned at him. "Because you're old."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Are you going to pester me with questions about the level of plumbing when I was a boy, _solntse_?"

"Well, now that you bring it up…"

The good humour hung in the air between them for a moment, and Alina turned the rest of her body around to face him, tugging her knees to her chest. The flames licked at her back from behind the grate, but she ignored the heat, focussing on the way he looked at her. Like he was trying to decide how much of himself she could be trusted with.

"I travelled a lot," he said finally. "When I was younger."

Alina seized on this new tidbit eagerly, turning it over in her mind, comparing it to the admittedly thin information she already knew. "Because of the danger? I know two Darklings aren't supposed to be in the same place because of assassination concerns."

She held her breath right after the words spilled out, wondering if she'd broken whatever spell she'd cast to get him to tell her even that much. But he simply inclined his head, looking thoughtful.

"I had a dangerous childhood, it's true. It made the travel necessary." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Are you getting ideas?"

After the last time she had asked to leave? Absolutely not. Alina shook her head, curls bouncing with the motion. "The Little Palace is the safest place for me, I know that."

She hesitated, a million other questions tumbling over her head. _What was your father like? Who was your mother? What did it feel like, knowing you were going to have to be the Darkling one day?_

_What's your real name?_

All of those seemed like far too dangerous questions to be asked, but she didn't let the moment go, either.

"Tell me about somewhere you travelled," she demanded, before belatedly adding, "...Please."

She learnt about Kerch that night. The Darkling's ice melt voice seemed to warm as it ran over her, painting a picture of a place that might as well have been another world for all the familiarity Alina had with it.

"It's better here," she declared sleepily. "Even with the Shadowfold. For us, it's better."

A rustling sound drew her attention, but it was late; she couldn't keep her eyes open. A moment or two later, a gentle hand was cupping her face.

"Not good enough," he murmured. She felt him still in something like surprise as her head sagged, leaning into him.

"We'll fix it," she mumbled.

He withdrew his hand. Before the muggy haze of sleep claimed her completely, she thought she saw him smile.

**vii.**

"Is it hard?"

Ivan's eyebrows skated up his forehead. The two of them were slumped against a wall in one of the training rooms, watching other Grisha train after their own bout. She still hadn't come anywhere close to beating him, but she _was_ getting better. There was just something about training with actual Grisha that spurred her on.

Especially the Darkling's personal favourites, who were all so strong that even when they tried to go easy on her, it was a challenge. The only person around her own age who wasn't afraid of her was Zoya, after all, and her ego could only take so much battering.

"Be more specific," he instructed, in his abrupt way.

"Killing people."

Her own blunt response didn't help his eyebrow situation at all. "Something I should worry about, Sun Summoner?"

She shoved at his bare shoulder, ignoring the lightning thrill that shot through her at the touch of bare skin. After the past few months, she'd almost gotten used to it.

"I'm not about to go on a rampage, if that's what you mean. I've just been thinking about it."

This time his eyebrows twitched into a frown, one of the few times Alina had seen Ivan look thoughtful without also looking angry.

"No," he said finally. "It's not. I know I'm supposed to say it is, but the truth is that it's the easiest thing in the world. They're there one moment, and gone in an instant."

Alina leaned her head back against the wall, and thought about that.

"For Ravka."

It was a moment or two before Ivan replied. "Yeah. For Ravka."

* * *

_First off, i just want to give a big thank you and a shout out to all of you lovely reviewers! You guys make writing this fic absolutely worth it, and I love getting your messages c:_

_Second, I'm sorry for having a little longer between updates this time. I think last chapter's massive word count sort of stymied me for a bit, and in the end I decided to just cut off this chapter at a shorter point rather than struggle with it for another week or more. So this was a longer wait and a shorter chapter, but hopefully still one that you'll all enjoy!  
_


	10. Chapter 10

**i.**

Alina was thirteen when she finally figured it out.

Summer had come and gone, taking the Darkling with it on campaign. Her lessons in her own ability had reverted to Baghra, who had acted like a thing possessed with the way she pushed her.

"More," the woman demanded, not even trying to hit her with her stick. That, perhaps, was the most distressing part. "_More_, Alina."

She wasn't entirely sure when Baghra had transitioned to using her name instead of just _girl_, but she decided that she liked it. Even if she was spread out on the ground, panting with exertion and drenched in sweat.

"Does it look," she gasped, passing her forearm over her eyes, "like anything more is going to happen this evening?"

Alina had lit up the palace grounds, her light searching out each and every crack and crevice, dispelling any and all hints of darkness. There would, tomorrow, be a litany of complaints about lost beauty sleep, she was sure.

"No," Baghra said, and there was the strangest note in her voice. If Alina didn't know the woman was too hard for sentiment, she would have said it sounded a little like despair. "It does not."

Old anxieties pricked at Alina, and she pushed herself up into a sitting position, blowing a wet lock of hair off her face. "Is that really a problem? I'm - I'm learning offensive skills. My power's grown massively. Remember when I could only light up the lake?"

Baghra sneered. Alina had no idea how old the woman was, but the expression made her strange face carry every single one of her innumerable years.

"Just how big do you suppose the Shadowfold is?"

**ii.**

Bigger than the palace grounds, that much Alina could guess.

"Would you stop pacing? You're making me dizzy."

Startled at the edge in Genya's voice, Alina stumbled to a halt. "_You're_ sounding cheerful."

Her beautiful friend was picking at her white sleeve, where a thread had come loose. That in and of itself was unsettling; Genya was usually nothing less than perfectly put together.

"I'm not required to have a sunny disposition all the time, you know."

_That_ was definitely a snap. Alina set both of her hands on her hips as she swivelled to look at the other girl properly. Genya didn't give her the same courtesy, scowling out the window.

"I don't think I've ever demanded you be any particular mood at all for me," Alina pointed out. "Definitely not sunny. Your fake smiles are terrifying."

"My fake smiles are perfect," Genya mumbled.

"Maybe to people who haven't spent most of the last five years with you." She was starting to get more than a little worried now, but the second she made to step towards Genya, her entire form stiffened. Whatever she was looking for, comfort wasn't it. "Are you ever going to tell me what's bothering you? It's not something I've done, is it?"

There was a long silence. Alina tried not to sigh as she watched Genya's shoulders loosen, one at a time, as though she were slowly coaxing her body to return to a relaxed state. She loved the other girl like a sister, but her refusal - or inability - to talk about the things that bothered her was one of the most frustrating traits Alina had ever encountered. And that included Zoya's entire personality.

"It's nothing you've done, Alina. And nothing you can fix."

"I'm the Sun Summoner. You could at least let me try."

A soft chuckle did nothing to ease her uncertainty, or her irritation. "Have I ever mentioned how much I love it when you get up on your Sun Summoner high horse? It's almost enough to make me believe you can do anything."

_Just how big do you think the Shadowfold is? _

"Almost?"

The smile Genya gave her looked completely genuine, and meant nothing. "Even you can't do everything on your own, Alina."

Alina felt her face twist at that, involuntarily. Real concern flickered across Genya's, but Alina waved it away. She might not have been as smooth about it, but two could still play at the secrets game.

They sat in silence for a time, each unsatisfied with the response they had gotten from the other. Alina looked around her beautiful, sumptuous room, and realised it had been a long time since she had seen Genya's.

"You never asked." At Alina's questioning look, Genya tucked a lock of hair perfectly back into place and refused to meet her eyes. "Why I dress like a servant. I know the subject must have come up, but you've never let anyone gossip to you about it. And you kept your promise, not to make me prove anything to you."

It hadn't been hard, doing any of that. And Alina was uncomfortably aware that her reasons weren't entirely altruistic. As time had passed, she'd just sort of - forgotten. People treated Genya with respect, even when Alina wasn't there - no one wanted word to get back to her, after all. Satisfied that her friend was being treated as she ought to be, Alina had let the matter slip from her mind as unimportant.

She was starting to get the impression that that might have been a mistake.

"You didn't seem to want to talk about it," Alina said, which was true. The lilt to Genya's lips said that she knew there was more to it, but mercifully, she didn't bring it up.

"I don't. And the last thing I want is for you to worry about me, all right? Everything is going to be fine."

"Didn't you say things were going to change?"

"Can't they change and be fine, too?"

_Not with the way you've been acting for the past few month_. Alina rolled that thought over in her mind.

"Is it graduation?" she blurted. "You're almost done, right? Is something going to happen after that?"

Without meaning to, her gaze dropped, taking in the white robe Genya wore so well. But however good it looked, it didn't change what it symbolised, anymore than Alina's own collection of black did.

But what would be the point of making a loyal and powerful Grisha a servant? It didn't make any sense. And Genya _was_ powerful, even if someone like Zoya, or even Ivan, wouldn't think so.

"I certainly hope things happen after it," Genya said airily, and Alina bit back a scream. The moment had escaped her again, and her friend was doing her best impression of a brick wall.

**iii.**

It was only later, after everything was all said and done, that it occurred to Alina that Genya had been trying to keep her safe in some small way.

Alina had a legion of guards to see to her physical safety. She was certain at this point that at least one person followed her every time she stepped foot outside of her rooms. The safety of her mind, however, had been left to the Darkling.

Hindsight was a beautiful thing. It became all too clear, later, why Genya might have sought to keep certain information from Alina, even as she struggled along on her own.

But only later.

**iv.**

Genya's room was empty.

Alina frowned, feeling the vague stirrings of deja vu. She remembered being eight years old, staring at a similar room stripped bare, probably with the exact same look of consternation on her face. _Didn't you used to have - well, things?_

"She moved."

Zoya's voice behind her was strangely devoid of any particular tone. Usually, the older girl was some variation of smug, or angry. And oh, could she manage variation on those two emotions. But when Alina swung around to glare at her, she was faced with impassiveness, Zoya's arms crossed solidly over her chest.

"What do you mean, she moved? She would have told me."

"You think I'm in a position to comment on whatever goes on between the two of you?" There was the irritation, at least. Zoya's attempt to curb her temper out of deference to the Sun Summoner's dignity always fell flat. "I'm just telling you what happened. She moved. Or _was_ moved, more specifically."

Alina took her own temper by the throat and strangled it. Getting mad back would only satisfy Zoya's need to prove that she could get under her skin. "To the Little Palace?"

Blue eyes glittered strangely as Zoya lifted her chin. Her expression remain unreadable, and for the first time, Alina found herself itching to know what it was that Zoya was thinking The other girl was usually so forthright with her opinions.

"No, Sun Summoner." There was the faintest edge to her title, as though Zoya was trying to make a point. "To the Grand Palace. The Darkling gave her to the Queen."

**v.**

Alina had never realised just how short her legs were before.

Which was strange. She could remember countless evenings perched on the edge of a chair, killing her legs in empty air, scuffing them along the floor in later evenings. One would have thought that so much time spent being unable to have her feet firmly on the ground would have made her aware of her lack of height.

One would have thought that those evenings spent alone with the Darkling would have made her realise a lot of things.

Her breath rattled in her chest, drowning out any sounds of shock or confusion that might have happened as she raced through the Grand Palace. She wasn't even sure how she'd gotten there, to be honest, how her short legs had carried her through the trees, along the paths to this unfamiliar place.

_Genya_. The name pounded in her head in time with her feet slapping the ground. Every hallway in the Grand Palace was austere, alien, nothing like the beautiful warmth of the Little Palace, and Alina hated it on principal. In that moment, she hated everything on principal. Including the Darkling.

Including herself.

Her _oprichniki _kept pace with her easily. By contrast, their steps were silent, spitting out no names at all. _Sun Summoner_, they said instead, once she had crashed her way through ten or twelve rooms. _If you tell us what you are looking for, perhaps we can help?_

"Genya," she gasped. "I need to find _Genya_."

"You want to find Genya." The rasping voice was so completely unexpected that it stopped her in her tracks, where guards and strange looks and muttering voices had been unable to. "How many times do I have to tell you, girl? They're two different things."

Alina's heart hammered against the walls of her chest, replacing the sound of her feet. Baghra's voice overrode it anyway, as did the tap of her cane on the floor.

The strange part wasn't that she looked out of place in the cold extravagance of the Grand Palace. The strange part was that she looked like it was exactly where she belonged, the strange, dark beauty of her fitting in right next to the gold and the jewels and everything else.

"What-?" Alina managed finally, uncomprehending.

Baghra snorted, nodding at her hands. "You're leaking, girl. Scared enough people to send a runner to me."

It took a moment for the words to make sense - there was a lag on everything in that moment, as though every bit of information had to push itself through a haze of confusion before it could settle in her mind. _The Darkling gave her to the Queen_.

Alina glanced down at her hands. They glowed, the weak haze echoing whatever was stuffing her brain. "Oh," she said faintly, and clenched her fingers one by one. The light winked out, and she couldn't help but think how fitting that was.

"Come." It wasn't a request. "This isn't the place for such foolishness. The _otkazat'sya_ don't need to see you weak."

_I'm not weak_, she wanted to snap, but the words rolled around on her tongue until she swallowed them down again. Meekly, she followed Baghra out of the Grand Palace, past the hedge maze, the temple, the lawns, through the trees until they reached Baghra's hut.

The _oprichniki_ melted away at some point. Alina couldn't decide if she appreciated that, or hated it. It was only an illusion of solitude, after all. They were always there, by order of the Darkling.

"Sit." Baghra pointed imperiously at Alina's usual spot on the floor.

Alina stood.

"He gave Genya to the Queen."

Baghra didn't say anything, didn't even look up to indicate that she'd heard. Alina's fists balled tighter.

"I _said_-"

"I heard what you said," the woman snapped, easing her body back into her chair. It occurred to Alina that she'd seen her out of it less than she'd seen her in it, and never off the Little Palace grounds.

Not that Alina ever ventured off the Little Palace grounds that often.

"How was I supposed to know that? You didn't exactly do anything to show you'd heard."

"I was trying to decide the best way to tell you that you're an idiot." Baghra's grey eyes reflected the firelight, her expression unreadable. It reminded her, she realised, of Zoya's face not that long ago. "What did you think she was being prepared for? You can't tell me you didn't know she wore servant's colours."

"Of course I knew! But I thought - I thought-"

Baghra cackled, but there was no humour in the sound. "Don't strain yourself, we both know you didn't think about it at all. You accepted it, like a good little Grisha, and didn't question it any further. And now what's done cannot be undone. There's no taking back a gift from a Queen."

"She's not a _gift_," Alina spat, and the light in the room jumped.

"She is what the Darkling wants her to be."

"She's not! She's my friend, not someone you can just pass off as a present to someone who doesn't even deserve her! What does the Queen need with a Grisha?"

"Not a Grisha, girl, a Tailor." Dry amusement twisted the woman's voice into something ugly. "Our Queen doesn't possess the kind of power that smoothes away wrinkles. This is something that's been in the works for years. You could have asked about it whenever you wanted, but you decided it wasn't important. Can't really blame you. You're just as much what he wants you to be as the rest of us."

The urge to hit something shot through her arms, and she dug her nails into her palms hard enough that the pain made her suck in a breath.

"I'm not," she said, voice low and quiet. "I'm just me. I'm the Sun Summoner-"

"A name he gave you."

"I'm _Alina_, then!" she cried. Frustrated tears threatened, but she forced them back, down again. She wasn't a baby any more, and this wasn't a problem she could make better with tears. "There has to be something I can do. He'll listen to me, won't he? I'm supposed to be important to him."

It took a long moment for Alina to recognise the emotion playing in the strange shadows of Baghra's face. She'd never seen the woman wear pity before, and it sat awkwardly on her.

"There's not a person alive who can tell that boy what to do, Alina."

But she shook her head, her hair brushing her shoulders as she did so. The curls that Genya had given her were completely gone by this point, only a soft wave remaining.

"I'll make him listen," she swore. "You'll see."

She left, not long after. It turned out that Baghra didn't have anything to say to that.

**vi.**

It was winter before the Darkling returned.

She saw Genya twice within that time. If Alina closed her eyes, she could remember the older girl's warm sigh, the hand on her cheek. _You little idiot_. The tale of her rampage through the halls of the Winter Palace had spread, apparently.

Alina found she didn't care. Rumours that the king himself was displeased with her behaviour filtered down to her, and Alina didn't give a damn. It turned out that with the Darkling gone, there was no one with the power to actually discipline her. She would have listened to Baghra, perhaps, but Saints only knew that Baghra didn't care enough to bother.

"It's not so bad," Genya reassured her, that first time. "The Queen appreciates my services, and it _is_ nice to be able to talk about clothes and hair with someone who thinks they're important."

"I think they're important!" Alina had protested. It had made Genya laugh, at least.

"Not like this, Sun Summoner. You have bigger things to worry about."

_Like you_, Alina had thought, but didn't say. If Genya had found some tenuous sort of peace with herself and what had happened, Alina didn't want to shatter it, even if she seethed internally with guilt and the unfairness of it all. She might even have let it sit, if it hadn't been for the second time she'd seen her.

It hadn't even been to visit. Alina had gone to one of the workrooms to find David - the material of her gloves was starting to wear through. But the first thing she'd seen when she'd stepped through the door was Genya, sitting silently on a stool near the doorway.

She looked stunning. Her hair was twisted up in an intricate knot, a few loose tendrils escaping to grace her slender neck. The white and gold of her clothes fell perfectly off every curve. As she jumped in quiet shock, the light caught her heavy diamond earrings as they swung.

"Genya?" Alina shut the door behind her, approaching slowly. "This is a little overdone for the Durasts, don't you think?"

"Oh," Genya said, and her rich voice was warm and sweet. She didn't look at Alina. "You know. Sometimes you just feel like dressing up."

Absently, she toyed with one of the earrings. Alina had never seen them before.

"Of course," she said slowly, wondering if she should reach out for the other girl, put an arm around her shoulders or something. Genya was staring steadfastly at nothing in particular. "Did the Queen give you those? The earrings?"

Genya tugged her hand away as though she'd been burnt. "Excuse me, darling," she murmured. Her stool scraped uncomfortably along the floor as she stood, and swept towards the door. "There's work I should be getting back to."

And before Alina could question her further, she was gone.

**vii.**

She didn't knock.

The _oprichniki_ have instructions to let her do what she wants anyway, and although they both looked extremely uncomfortable about it, neither one of them stopped her from pushing open the heavy double doors.

She'd picked her dress carefully, and her heart had ached for Genya as she did it. She heard her friend's voice in her head as she picked through her wardrobe, guiding her choices for the effect she wanted to achieve.

She almost, _almost_ went to find something that wasn't black. But that was where her anger hit the wall of her affection, and she couldn't do it. Alina was mad, yes, but she didn't hate the Darkling. She wasn't about to reject him, or anything he'd done for her.

Instead, she picked out the closest thing to a real _kefta_ that she own, embroidered in gold. Once satisfied that she didn't look like a child playing dress up, she had crossed the hall to the Darkling's rooms.

Every head in the room snapped up when she entered, even his. Before he could speak, though, she was pointing at the door.

"Out."

Alina had spent five years watching the Darkling. She hadn't seen him at his worst, but she had made up for that by seeing more of him than anyone else. So when she spoke - when she gave her _order_ - it wasn't hard to infuse it with the same authority and expectation of being obeyed that the Darkling did.

She might have only been thirteen, but half of the Grisha in the room were on their feet before any of them thought to look at him for permission.

There was a moment of complete silence, as the Darkling let them sweat it out. And then he tilted his head slightly, indicating the door.

"You heard the Sun Summoner."

The tiniest bit of relief eased the tension in her chest, and Alina wrestled with it internally to keep it from showing externally as the Grisha filed out. Ivan was amongst them, she noted, and it was harder than it should have been to ignore his presence.

She managed it, though. She managed all of it, staying stock still and immovable until the last Grisha was gone, and the doors shut tightly behind her.

"How can I help you, _solntse_?"

_Don't call me that_, she wanted to cry, but the lesson he had given her the last time she had made that kind of protest was still bright in her mind.

"You gave," she started, and was proud of the way her voice didn't shake, "Genya away. To the Queen. Like she was a piece of property you could sign over to someone."

The way he regarded her made Alina want to hit him. Or worse. Lash out with her power until he understood the ugly, festering wound that had ulcerated her stomach. She tucked her hands behind her back, squeezing the fingers into fists.

"Yes," he said finally.

"_Yes?_ That's _it_?"

The Darkling folded his hands neatly on the table in front of him, seemingly unbothered by her sudden display of temper. "We all make sacrifices. Genya has known this was coming for some time. I...would have thought you were aware of it, too."

Alina didn't flinch at the careful, casual note to his voice, the one that implied exactly what Baghra had told her outright. She had had weeks and weeks and weeks to ruminate on her own guilt already, her failure as a friend. It was that feeling that she had taken inside her, forged into weapon and armour both. It was that feeling she wielded now, and so he couldn't use it against her.

"Do we? What are you sacrificing, then? What am _I _sacrificing? If we all have to make them, maybe you should just hand me over to the King now! He can have me directly, instead of this farce you've set up with his wife!"

**viii.**

Alina had asked.

She hadn't wanted to. Moreover, she had known that Genya wouldn't have wanted her to. Genya, her best and only real friend, who had played her cards and her feelings so close to her chest for five years now because she had known this was coming. Genya, who protected herself with words and smiles and pretending that everything was just fine. Genya, who had tried so very hard to protect _Alina_ in just the same way.

Some things, Alina didn't deserve to be protected from. And so she had asked Zoya what it meant that Genya wore diamond earrings when she had no means of acquiring them, and Zoya had told her.

Some part of Alina had noted the lack of relish in the girl's voice when she told her the gifts came from the King. Perhaps some part of Zoya had realised that her pretty face would be less pretty covered in burn scars, or perhaps there was something else going on inside that complicated skull of hers. Alina hadn't stuck around to find out.

**ix.**

The Darkling stood. Sudden and smooth and silent, with barely a rustle of clothing.

"You are not," and his voice was a knife, cold steel parting the air, "nor will you ever be, for the King."

Alina ignored the danger signs, brave for Genya in a way she had never been for herself. "Really? Then who have I been promised to? The Apparat, maybe, I've heard that he's gaining the King's ear. The priest with his pet Sun Summoner, that would be a tale for the ages."

His sigh washed over her. The weight of that disappointment was crushing, and she felt her rage wilt under the pressure of it. But the image of Genya jerked her hand away from her ear shored it up again, and as the Darkling's hand curled gently under her chin to tilt her head up, she set her jaw and stared him down.

"You are a child," he murmured. She clenched her teeth against the string of the rebuke, but the tears didn't come like they might have done once; she considered that a victory. "You cannot begin to imagine the depth of the game we play here, yet. You see only the pieces, and not the board."

A tremble wracked her body at the thought of what she was about to say. It took her a moment, two before she could convince herself to say it, to make her tongue form the letters.

"Don't. Touch me."

She didn't push his hand away, didn't shove at him, or even move her chin. She simply stared up at him, and waited for him to move his hand.

He almost didn't. Alina could see it in his eyes, that quartz gaze somehow clearer to her now than it had ever been. Where before she had always seen a stranger, now she recognised that it was still the Darkling peering out at her from behind that icy, inhuman stare.

It terrified her. She wanted to curl up and cry, to throw herself at him and beg his forgiveness. But none of those things would help Genya, so she stayed exactly where she was.

Eventually, the Darkling pulled his hand away.

"Perhaps I have left you without guidance for too long," he murmured.

The sneer that twisted her face was an ugly, frightened thing. "You mean because I'm disagreeing with you, don't you. Because I think what you did was _sick_, not necessary, I've somehow lost my way? What is _wrong_ with you?"

Anger stole his features. Real, sudden anger that seemed to be almost as much of a surprise to him as it was to Alina. She was too shocked to be scared in the face of it, of the way it broke across his beautiful face like a wave crashing into the rocks.

"The problem is not with me. The sickness is within Ravka, and it cannot be bludgeoned out. It has to be excised, treated, healed. Genya is a soldier as much as you, or I, or any other Grisha. You are not so quick to defend her as you think. She has already been to see me, and I have already told her that if she wishes it, I will remove her from her position. She refused."

_If she refused, then why did she go to see you about it in the first place?_ "I'm not a soldier," she reminded him hollowly. "I'm a child. If it means not sacrificing someone like Genya to someone like the King for the sake of a _game_, then I'll stay that way."

"For the sake of Ravka."

"I don't care about Ravka!" That was a lie, but it felt like the truth when she said it. "I care about protecting my friends. And if you cared about me at all, you'd find another piece to move on whatever board is so important here."

It was a low trick, a manipulative one, and she used it anyway because she didn't know what else she could say to make him change his mind. She didn't know how to _fix_ this.

Baghra's pitying face came to mind. _There's not a person alive who can tell that boy what to do, Alina._

She had thought she was different. She had thought he would at least listen to her, that her feelings of outrage and disgust would have some kind of impact on his decision making. But she only had to look at his face one to see just how unmoveable he truly was.

Without a further word, she turned on her heel and went to leave.

"Alina."

The name shot through her like a bolt out of the blue, rooting her to the spot. It was the first time he had ever used her name, at least that she could remember. If she thought she had stooped low, _he_ was scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Hot rage rushed into the hollow places her shock vacated, and she whipped back around, bringing her hand down in a sharp, instictive motion.

"_No!_" A wave of heat billowed out from her, rushing over the Darkling. It was enough to make the air waver between them, and she thought she saw beads of sweat form on his forehead, but there was no actual damage. Alina couldn't decide if that was a problem for her or not. "I know what you're doing! You can't just use my name to tug on my feelings and make me stay. You're _wrong_, Darkling, and there's nothing you can say or do to change my mind."

Alina didn't know if that was true. So she left, before he could recover from her actions enough for them to find out.

* * *

_Once again, thank you all so much for your beautiful reviews! Reading them is always the highlight of my day c: I would like to say though, if you have a question that you would like answered for sure, please provide me with a way of responding to you! I can't reply to anonymous reviews, and it's usually pretty late when I post these chapters - I'm often tired and forget to write notes here, haha, so you might not get an answer at all, and I would hate to leave you hanging.__  
_

_That said, the main question I've gotten is if Alarkling is going to happen. It definitely will, along with Malina and potential other ships that may or may not crop up along the way, depending on how the story plays out. However, as Alina is only thirteen at this point, I'm not going to start writing the ships into the story in any big way until she's older.  
_

_Also, I should note here that I started writing this fic before I read Genya's short story. So while parts of this definitely echo what happened there, obviously some details have changed, as I had already set events in motion before I realised a Genya story even existed! I hope you can forgive me._

_Anyway thanks again for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter c:_


	11. Chapter 11

**interlude.**

The boy had a scar over his heart three inches wide.

He was lucky, he had been told. He had broken only one leg, and the knife had dragged across his skin, instead of piercing into it. Ana Kuya told him that he was unlikely to be so lucky again, and that he should stop giving the younger children fool ideas.

The boy took his survival as proof that no matter how stupid a thing he took it into his head to do, he would probably come out the other side. His fool ideas did not stop, but no matter how many times Ana Kuya threatened to expel him from Keramzin, she never went through with it.

The boy was strong. Charming, too, with an easy grin that hid all kinds of darkness. He had learnt to talk himself out of trouble by getting into it, with no one to hold him back or help him along. He helped the younger children, but the older ones, those who had grown up alongside him, they tended to avoid him.

There was something strange about Malyen Oretsev, they said. The boy was always ready to talk, except when he wasn't. Except when he would go off by himself into the nearby forests, be gone for days at a time. He always came back with game, and a look in his eyes that said he was missing a part of him.

As the years passed, some began to notice a pattern to these disappearances. Keramzin was set well away from anything interesting whatsoever, and yet the news filtered - as news did - through to them nonetheless.

And what interesting news it was. Tales of a Sun Summoner, stories that no one believed at first, but that persisted so strongly throughout the years that most couldn't help but cling to some sort of hope. She had caused crops to grow in dark, barren lands, some said. She had saved the King from a Fjerdan assassin. She had gone to the Shu Han border with the Darkling and wiped out an entire raiding party with a single flare of light.

Ravka was saved.

The boy disagreed, although never out loud. The Sun Summoner was a pale and sickly eight year old girl, and he was still called to join the First Army once he turned sixteen. Ravka was Ravka, and Ravka had no love for orphans.

**summer, in the year of alina starkov's sixteenth birthday**

**i.**

Alina's breath came sharp in her chest as she bared her teeth in a grin at her last opponent. Scattered, groaning bodies lay at her feet, and she stepped over and around them carefully as she circled, gloved hands held defensively in front of her.

"You look like a barbarian when you do that," Zoya complained. The older girl's hair was sweat-slicked, her face flushed, chest heaving in the same way as Alina's. The difference between them was that Alina was her only opponent. The defeated students dragging themselves out of the training ring all belonged to the Sun Summoner.

"Scared?" Alina panted, circling one mirrored hand. Zoya scowled - which had the effect of making her eyes squint against the sudden sparkle of light at the same time, of course.

"Not on your life."

The sudden gust of wind was sharp enough to hurt, but Alina grabbed the pain and used it as a focus, drawing on the light streaming in from the wide windows all around them. She laughed at the way Zoya cursed when her wave of heat hit the older girl, sending her staggering back. Her black hair, previously soaked through, frizzed out.

"_Alina Starkov_."

"Shows you for being so shallow, Zoya," Alina taunted back, and this time managed to dance out of the way of the next gust of wind. She flexed her wrist again, sending light cascading out across the room in a dizzying stream. Before she could follow up with an actual attack, though, Nadia crashed into the room.

"He's returning!" she exclaimed, eyes wide. "His retinue has been seen approaching the city!"

Abruptly, Alina's good mood drained away. She stared at Nadia until the other girl flushed bright red, trying to make sense of the sentence. There was only one person _he_ could refer to, and _he_ hadn't written to inform her of his impending arrival.

Neither had Ivan.

"What." Ignoring Zoya, she stripped off her gloves, striding across the ring until she was across from Nadia. "Who told you this?"

The other girl's wide eyes skittered nervously away, not quite meeting Alina's. She bit back a frustrated sigh, and tried to make herself look less - powerful. Having poured years into looking the exact opposite, it wasn't a skill she had studied all that diligently.

"One of the servants was visiting her sister in the Grand Palace, and heard it from the messenger he sent ahead. They're expected here within the hour."

Alina felt Zoya's shadow sifting through the light, although the other girl managed to move silently until she was standing at her shoulder. "But it's summer."

In the face of not one, but two of the most powerful students still studying at the Grisha school, Nadia appeared to lose her ability to speak. Her mouth opened, certainly, but the only sound that came out was a squeak.

Zoya rolled her eyes, but Alina reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, taking her own unease and shoving it into a mental corner somewhere.

"Sorry. You just surprised me, that's all." Her gaze slid over to Zoya, who hadn't stepped out of the ring yet, but looked very much like she wanted to. "Concede?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"It was worth a try." Alina stepped out of the ring, technically losing the round. Once, that might have bothered her. Now, all she could think about was the fact that she only had an hour to get ready, and she was _completely_ drenched in sweat.

**ii.**

It was almost entirely impossible to get anywhere fast, and still look dignified about it. The Little Palace was more used to seeing Alina rushing through the place, and half the servants there had watched her grow up, but - _but_. She was trying to have some decorum lately. She had a point to prove.

Not that walking with purpose instead of hurling her body through the corridors was really going to help with that, but she didn't think she'd seen the Darkling move at anything faster than a stroll in the nearly eight years she had known him. Some things, she was willing to follow his example in.

Once the door to her rooms was shut securely, however, it was a whole other story. Alina practically ran across her receiving room, leaving a trail of clothes behind her as she shoved open her bedroom door. She was shirtless and hopping out of her black trousers before she noticed that she wasn't alone.

"I can come back," an amused voice hummed. "If now is a bad time for you, that is."

"_Genya!_"

Urgency - and her state of undress - momentarily forgotten, Alina just about tripped over herself on her way to hug her friend. It had been too long since the older girl had had the free time to visit, and Alina clung to her a little tighter than necessary despite herself.

Despite Genya, too. The older girl put up with the hug as long as she could stand it, before gently disengaging from Alina. Alina, who wasn't one for physical demonstration most of the time anyway, let her do it.

"The Queen-?"

"Heard the Darkling was returning, and was afflicted with a sudden migraine." Genya rolled her eyes. "I have _no_ idea where she got the idea that he would spare even a second of thought to her well-being, but I imagine she'll be out of commission until her sense returns to her. So this evening, at least."

Alina pulled a face, allowing Genya to place a soft hand on the small of her back, steering her towards the bathroom attached to her bedroom. "She's awful."

"Some things go without saying," Genya breezed, leaning over to run the water. Alina shoved her hand away, scowling as she twisted the taps herself.

The sound of running water covered the abruptly awkward silence, both girls doing their best not to think about what other things went unsaid, or why it was that Alina was so very insistent on running her own bath. They had never been equals - there was only one other person in the world who was Alina's equal - but the past two and a half years had only served to hammer that fact home far harder than anyone reasonable would consider necessary.

Alina was not, she had noticed, surrounded by reasonable people.

"It's going to run over," Genya pointed out quietly, and Alina cursed, shutting off the water with a slam of her fist.

"_Ow._"

That earned her a sigh, and another eyeroll. "Get in the water before you do any more damage to yourself, darling," Genya insisted. One of her hands lifted towards Alina, as though she were about to help her finish undressing.

The black look on Alina's face stopped her, and the Sun Summoner struggled out of her workout gear on her own power.

"You will at _least_ let me do your hair, won't you?" Genya complained, as Alina dropped her body into the water with a splash. A faint shriek of dismay escaped the older girl's lips, and she narrowed her eyes at Alina. "_That_ was mature."

"When have I ever been able to stop you from doing what you like with my hair?" Alina said. They both ignored the knowledge that Alina could make her do whatever she felt like with a few words.

Genya's firm fingers dragging over her scalp were a relief, easing the tension that had built up behind her skull since Nadia had interrupted with her news. Alina couldn't deny that she was excited, of course, but...

"It's summer," she murmured, as Genya washed something floral smelling out of her hair.

"You're worried?"

"He usually writes if he plans on being somewhere unexpectedly. So either something has happened, or this is one of his little tests."

The pause that preceded Genya's little laugh was too long to be natural. "What an ego! Who's to say it has anything to do with you at all, Sun Summoner?"

Alina snorted, allowing her friend to help her out of the water. "Past experience. It always has to do with me, Genya."

She wished she could deny the quiet thrill that even saying the words herself gave her, but there was no lying to herself. Being the focus of a man like the Darkling could be equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

And frustrating, she allowed, as Genya steered her into the stool opposite her mirror and began to play with her hair. Alina closed her eyes and let her do what she wanted, trusting the other girl absolutely.

At least, until she heard the rattle of jewelled hairpins. "Oh, no you don't. That's too far."

Genya's face was the picture of devastation. "_Alina. _Do you know how often I get to play with hair like yours? All the jewels in the world couldn't enhance the Queen's stringy blonde, but for you-"

"I am _not_ dressing up for someone else like I would for a ball."

"Who said anything about dressing for someone else? You're perfectly entitled to wear jewels in your hair for yourself."

Alina couldn't help the way her gaze flickered to Genya's throat and the heavy sapphire necklace settled between delicate collarbones. Genya did them both the favour of pretending not to notice.

"No jewels," Alina said, firmly.

Genya slid a single, diamond encrusted pin into her thick locks anyway, pulling half of her hair back off her face. "You are no fun."

"Wait until the winter fete. You can put all the jewels you like wherever you like, then. I promise."

That earned her a soft laugh, and a kiss on the cheek. "I was going to do that anyway. Now, make up-"

"_No._"

**iii.**

Alina forced herself to walk sedately. The trip wasn't far, after all - it wasn't like rushing would get her there appreciably faster. And the last thing she wanted to do was look too eager. It had only been something like four months since she'd seen him, and they had written in that time.

Even if he hadn't told her about his early return.

She caught sight of her reflection in a nearby window, and couldn't help but check her appearance one final time. Genya had lost the battle regarding make up, but Alina suspected it was only because she was still bright and flushed from her workout earlier that day, the remnants of her power singing through her skin.

Genya had told her once that she had the looks to carry it, and Alina had to agree. She wasn't classically beautiful like her friend, or possessed of the same alluring qualities as someone like Zoya. Once, that might have bothered her. Now, she simply examined the proud line of her jaw, the stark colour of her eyes against skin that remained pale, but no longer sickly.

The word was striking. Alina grinned at her reflection, and swept towards the door. As she did with any place she wanted to go these days, there was no warning knock.

Which was how she ended up walking in on Ivan just as he was pulling an undershirt up over his head.

_Don't blush_, Alina told herself forcefully, shutting the door behind her and leaning back against it. _Don't blush don't blush don't blush._

She was smirking by the time Ivan jerked his head over to her, mouth open like he was about to chew out an intruder for daring to interrupt him.

"I can go," she offered, focussing steadfastly on his face. The urge to let her eyes dip lower, run the lines of his torso, was definitely there. But brazen wasn't her style, if only because it was definitely Zoya's. "If now is a bad time."

His lips quirked up, easing away lines of tension and anger. "Sun Summoner." He tugged the shirt back down. "You're looking...well."

The way his gaze flickered over her form left no doubts as to just how _well_ he thought she looked. Alina took a moment to bask in the attention, saying nothing. There were few people in her life with the self-confidence to think they had any right to check out the Sun Summoner.

"I just kicked Zoya's ass in training," she said finally, pushing off the door. His eyes followed her as she moved, and she felt her smirk widen. Just a little bit. "That's enough to make anyone glow."

"You don't need the help."

Internally, her stomach gave a triumphant little flip. She'd had what might be termed an _appreciation_ for Ivan since she had been twelve or so, but it had only been on his last trip to Os Alta that she thought he might have started noticing that. Noticing her, as more than just one of the people he'd put his hopes for revenge in.

"That's cute," she said out loud, teasing. She could do this, really. She was the Sun Summoner; she could turn full grown men to ash if she wanted. Theoretically, at least. Flirting was nothing. "Have you been practicing your niceness, Ivan?"

"I've been accused of a lot of things. Nice isn't one of them."

Her breath caught. She couldn't help it, not with that weight in his words, the _implications_. It occurred to Alina that she might have been slightly out of her depth. She loved it.

"So I can assume that now _is_ a good time, then?"

He snorted, and Alina resumed proper breathing technique.

"Isn't any time good, when it's the Sun Summoner visiting?"

"I do still have a name. I know you know what it is."

She sighed, the bare skin of her upper arm just brushing his as she moved past him. The rooms set aside for Ivan were bare, spartan. It could have been because he was rarely in them, but Alina thought it was more likely a reflection of the owner's tastes.

His hand twitched, like he wanted to take a hold of her arm. But even Ivan wasn't that forward; she rewarded his restraint with the faintest touch of her fingers over his palm, before she took a seat on the edge of his bed.

"Alina," he said, not turning to look at her, and there was a deeper edge to his voice that abruptly made all of her teasing arrogance fall away. She dropped her gaze, staring down at his hand, which had curled into a loose fist.

"I missed you," she admitted softly, making herself vulnerable. The Darkling, she was sure, would have disapproved.

But the Darkling was a force of nature, and he used power in a different way. Being vulnerable would have made him weak. For Alina, it was just another way of getting what she wanted.

Plus, she really had missed him. She wasn't lying about that.

She watched the sudden tension in Ivan's broad shoulders unwind, the muscles shifting back into place as he turned around. Tugging her feet up so she could rest her chin on her knees, she shed the Sun Summoner like a second skin, and became Alina. A Grisha trainee with a crush.

"My brother said that you have written to him many times over the campaign season."

"Your brother isn't stationed in the far flung reaches of Ravka, where half of the couriers are too terrified to go," Alina pointed out. "I write to you when I write to the Darkling."

That seemed to mollify him, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. _Boys_, honestly.

He sat down next to her, barely an inch of space stopping their legs from brushing together. Alina the girl felt a powerful urge to rest her head on his shoulder, but Alina the Sun Summoner couldn't let herself be _that _vulnerable.

Maybe she was more like the Darkling than she preferred to think

She rested her head on her knees instead, twisting it to look over at him. There must have been something appealing about the image, because he was smiling at her.

"Why are you back early?"

The smile disappeared. "You haven't spoken to the Darkling about that?"

"I haven't spoken to the Darkling at all yet. I came to see you first."

She felt him stiffen next to her, and his voice was overly casual when he chose to speak again. A frown of her own creased her forehead.

"You should go and do that. I'm sure he wants to see you."

"I'm sure he does. I'm less sure what that has to do with where I am right now."

"_Alina." _ His voice was a growl, and this time he did dare to grab her wrist, dark eyes boring into hers. "You can't just deny the Darkling what he wants. Even you."

It took Ivan a few seconds to realise that the place he was gripping her had started to heat up. He held on for a second or two, but as Alina kept staring at him, he seemed to realise that she wasn't about to stop. He cursed, shaking his hand out as he let go.

Alina spoke as though nothing had happened. "I don't exist to fulfill the Darkling's wants. He doesn't control me."

Genya would have disagreed. Genya would have given her a sad smile and a kiss on the cheek, and murmured _he controls us all, Alina_.

Ivan was more direct. "Maybe not. But you're the only one who can say that."

The implication filled the silence. She forgot, sometimes. The Darkling's touched lingered on every person in the Little Palace, and there were few who escaped his grasp. She had never doubted that everything he did had Ravka at the core of it. But she was also well aware that any gentleness she had seen from him was more than matched by ruthlessness.

Alina stood.

"I will see you, then."

Tension unspooled from the set of her shoulders. Her mood put off, she didn't bother eyeing them.

"If you think I'd have it any other way, you've underestimated me."

That made her laugh, tipping her head back as she reached for the door. "Ivan, I don't underestimate anyone these days." She felt the smile crease her cheeks as she looked back at him. "I have your measure exactly. Think about that."

**iv.**

It had been nearly three years, and Alina still had to convince herself not to knock.

It was her own quiet rebellion. The Darkling might have refused to listen to her, refused to grant any of her serious requests, but he couldn't make her announce herself before she visited.

He could, however, make her stare at the door for a few minutes and argue with herself before she pushed it open.

To find the room empty.

Alina suppressed a groan. This was always the worst part. Sitting and waiting for him meant that she had been brave enough to enter, but not brave enough to find him. Pushing open the doors to his private rooms, though...well. That meant pushing open the doors to his private rooms. Alina had grown a lot, but she was seldom that brave.

She was, however, more frequently annoyed. The Darkling's _Darklingness_ had meant cutting short her reunion with Ivan. Which mean that, whatever he was doing, she was going to cut that short too. Steeling herself, she set her hand onto the doors, and eased them open.

"You're back earlier than expected," she announced around the hard lump of anxiety in her throat. It wasn't like could greet him by name, and she refused to say _moi soverenyi_. Ever.

His body was angled away from her, glad - as always - in black. Alina found herself watching him more carefully than usual, taking in the sight of him. Whatever their differences the past few years, she'd found that it was always difficult being parted so long. He was the cornerstone of her life - the main thing, other than Baghra, that gave it any stability.

And the only thing that gave her purpose. So she fell silent and simply watched, as pale, slender hands scraped loose hair back off his face, securing it in a tie. Only when he was done, did he turn.

"Alina." He lingered over the syllables in the same way he always did. Every time he said her name, she remembered the way he had called after her, asking her to stay. Every time, she remembered leaving. Guilt and pride pricked her in equal measure; she was mostly sure that was his intention.

Some of his hair had fallen out of the tie already, the shorter locks sliding across his face. Only this man, she thought, could make looking so dishevelled seem professional.

Alina swallowed, finding that she had to fight a blush now in the same way she had when interrupting Ivan. _Maybe I should rethink barging in on people so much_.

"That's it?" she demanded. "Four months, and it's just 'Alina'." She pitched her voice lower than his, mocking.

His head ducked slightly, those loose locks tipping forward. Alina tucked her hands behind her back to still the sudden itching in her fingers. He was laughing at her, she _knew_ it.

"Four months, and all _I_ get is 'you're early'? Of the two of us, I am not the cutting one, here."

She barked her own laugh, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it in much the same way she had with Ivan. "_That's_ rich."

He raised an eyebrow back at her, and that was definitely a glint of amusement behind quartz grey eyes. Alina felt the tension in the back of her neck slowly ease, the way it always did once months worth of pent up anxiety was able to disperse. It was too easy to focus on the part of the Darkling she didn't like when he was gone.

"The way you speak to me," he murmured. "I'm almost worried you have no respect left."

"When you say almost, you mean not at all."

He chuckled, and Alina felt a warm glow settle in her chest. "Why do I bother to speak at all, when you can apparently read my mind?"

"To tell me why you're back in Os Alta so early?"

"Ah." Absently, he brushed one of those loose pieces of hair back off his face. The itching in Alina's fingers intensified. "You aren't going to let that go."

"You didn't even write to tell me you were coming." She did her best to keep the accusation out of her voice. "You're supposed to be keeping me in your confidence."

That was laughable, but it was still one of the things they had agreed upon in order to get her to start talking to him again when she was thirteen. He had promised not to keep things of that magnitude from him, and she had pretended to believe him.

Actually, she had pretended to believe Genya, who had spoken on the Darkling's behalf when Alina refused to see him. It was less the promise that had convinced her, and more the fact that he had respected her wish not to deal with him. That, and the fact that Genya had been willing to speak on his behalf at all, after what he had caused to happen.

Still, Alina was well aware that, despite the talks on politics and army manoeuvres they had had in past years, there were still things he kept from her. And every now and then, she threw that in his face.

Which was, as always, unflappable.

"I am," he agreed simply. "Which is why I have decided to take you on campaign with me."

* * *

_BAM another chapter down! With a timeskip! 3ish years have passed since chapter 10, and Alina is now 16 years old and we are ready to get the ball rolling on some action in this story. Maybe one day we'll even introduce Mal properly!_

_Also, to the anon who asked about showing her past before Keramzin, I probably won't go there. We sadly have no canonical information on that for me to build on, and I'm afraid you've given me too much credit with the foreshadowing haha - the reason Alina remembers fires is because her village was hit by raiders, who often use fire as a weapon. Maybe one day we'll get information from Bardugo about Alina's past and I'll be able to include it somehow!_

_As always, thank you everyone for reading, and especially thank you to everyone who reviewed c: I am trying to be better/faster about getting back to people, I promise._


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